However, analysts at financial institutions were of mixed opinions as to whether the rumor was credible. One analyst said that a Apple taking minority stake in ARM was more likely than an outright takeover, but even that hardly made sense.

ARM's share price rose to 255 pence on Thursday morning. A spokesperson for ARM said the company was not commenting on the rumor.

Apple is said to be an architectural licensee of ARM's processor architecture and two years ago bought a well-regarded chip design team, P.A.Semi, so it could develop its own chips. The first fruit of that effort is thought to be the A4 chip inside Apple's iPad tablet computer.

The newspaper quoted an un-named London stock broker saying: "A deal would make a lot of sense for Apple. That way, they could stop ARM's technology from ending up in everyone else's computers and gadgets."

Apple might have to bid 400 pence a share to pull off a 100 percent acquisition which would value ARM at more than £5.2 billion (about $8 billion), the newspaper said.

"Quite incredible," said Janardan Menon, an analyst with Liberum Capital in London. "I don't see what Apple would get out of this. Apple has a strategy to design its own chips, but only for application processors, and it can do that with ARM intellectual property. It doesn't need to buy the company."

Menon continued: "The only reason for Apple to buy ARM is to deny the technology to other IP licensors. But Apple can buy an architectural license; change the architecture as much as they want to develop a differentiated product."

By: DocMemory
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