The core of the piece:<p><i>The A4 is actually built around a CPU core based on the common ARM Cortex A9 CPU, a 32-bit core that comes in several different flavors, with different numbers of cores. In typical cases, companies like Apple actually license the CPU design -- rather than paying $278 million to acquire the whole company!</i><p>If Arm Holdings could be acquired for $278m, I'm sure Apple would have done it by now. Unfortunately for Apple, though, its market cap is actually in the $2-$2.5bn range.