Semiconductor designer ARM Wednesday reported a 10% fall in first quarter dollar sales as consumer demand for electronic products continued to suffer, but said there are signs of an improving trend in the semiconductor market.

AMD spin-off Global Foundries will take an "agnostic view" of the market according to its head of communications, Jon Carvill.

Much to the chagrin of the largest high-tech companies whose products have served as the foundation for computing for the past 30 years, the microprocessor is breaking free of the chains that bind it. ARM is a microprocessor manufacturer that is taking advantage of advancing technology's steady destruction of those chains forged by the likes of AMD, Intel, and Microsoft.

For a long time, Intel counted Advanced Micro Devices as its chief rival. These days, it's looking more like Intel and Qualcomm will be going mano-a-mano. While Intel says it retain full control of the process—essentially leaving TSMC as a contract manufacturer—the move clearly is aimed at stealing market share from British chip designer ARM, which licenses it products to Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Freescale and other companies.

Texas Instruments has sent out a little reminder that it won't be a cakewalk into the smartphone market for newcomers Intel and Nvidia. TI continues to upgrade its arsenal of ARM-design-based processors, which have been shipping for years to cell phone customers.

ARM, the company that has designed most of the processors in mobile phones, on Monday announced a new, low-cost processor called "Sparrow" at the Mobile World Congress trade show. The company said it is aiming to conquer the netbook market with its multi-core Cortex A9 architecture.

The Cambridge-based company was already eight years old when on Jan. 6 1999 EE Times reported ARM's own prediction that the company would have 70 percent of the market for processors in the mobile phone handset business. This was a statistic that came to define ARM's early success.

Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor has a prototype low-cost notebook using ARM-designed chips is the latest evidence that the UK company could play a major part in the next wave of computing.

Fourteen of the world's largest mobile phone and chip makers, including Sony Ericsson, Vodafone and ARM, joined the Open Handset Alliance on Tuesday to support the Android mobile device platform developed by Google Inc.

ARM and Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, have announced that they will bring the full Ubuntu Desktop operating system to the ARMv7 processor architecture to address demand from device manufacturers. The addition of the new operating system will enable new netbooks and hybrid computers, targeting ARM technology-based SoCs.