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Thanks to GigaOM’s Stacey Higginbothom for pointing out the interview ARM CEO gave yesterday, talking up the opportunity for ARM designs in the embedded market. While ARM is best known for being the design that powers the high end iPhone and iPad, East makes it clear that looking ahead the company is interested in the machine to machine embedded market that isn’t about mobility but maximum connectivity of all devices. East noted that while he sees the market for smart connected devices as around 3-4 billion units per year, he thinks the embedded market (the dumber connected devices like lights and sensors) could be around 30-40 billion units per year. Those types of embedded devices often have significant power constraints so very low power designs will matter and while the licensing revenue per unit will be small because the designs are so basic, at 40 billion units we’re still talking incremental revenue.