Simon Segars, chief executive officer, said: "2015 will bring exciting opportunities and challenges as ARM invests in new products and technologies and continues to establish itself in competitive new markets."
The company says the outlook for royalty revenues in 2015 is 'encouraging'. In its financial statement, it said 'we anticipate that total group dollar revenues for Q1 will be up about 10% year on year, based on strengthening royalty revenue growth, and our expectation of the profile of licence revenue through the year'.
The company signed 53 processor licences in Q4 2014, taking the total signed in the year to 163, with 15 for Cortex-A series processors. Activity is said to be high in China and Korea. Meanwhile, 23 licences were signed in Q4 for Cortex-M class processors.
Pete Hutton, president of ARM's product groups, said he was 'really pleased' with the quarter. "There was a big uptick in licensing and it was a record quarter for licensing revenue and for licenses closed. It shows there is growing demand out there for ARM technology."
According to Hutton, there were 11 new licensees amongst the 53 companies who signed deals in Q4. "They range from small microcontroller start ups to large OEMs," he added.
Also included in the list are five licenses for two forthcoming cores – codenamed Teal and Grebe – which appear to be based on a variant of the company's v8 architecture targeted specifically at MCUs. According to ARM, Teal and Grebe are 'designed for energy efficient and secure embedded applications from smart automotive to wearable technology'.
