It's a change in direction partly, ARM don't make chips, they...

It's a change in direction partly, ARM don't make chips, they only license the rights to
their IP. Over time, more and more companies started to license and use their core.

I'd used Motorola uC, uP and DSP's for a long period (20+ years), I knew the product,
could trust it and so on. Motorola become Freescale and now is part on NXP and not
long back Motorola was the biggest uC manufacture, they had a huge slice of the auto
segment.

About 5 years back, even Freescale started to offer uC with ARM cores. As do many of the
silicon manufactures these days. In the interest of sticking with the strength and being able
to switch processors and get programmers, I started to use the ARM based (Freescale)
devices.

It (ARM) has become the standard to a large degree.

As far as efficiency, uC (uP etc) have become a commodity market largely, the gap between
devices closed up over the years. It's now (always was) more about sticking with what you
trust will be around in a few years and what people know. Oh, and cost plays a part to.

Having to redesign a product because a component is no longer available is a huge problem/
cost.

@pat, I don't know the product, I'll take a look when I get some time.