Comment by andrewclunn

Apple brought their chipset in house, using ARM is a base, to control their supply chain, cut costs, and allow for a RISC based architecture (which honestly just makes sense now these days). The biggest hinderance to RISC-V adoption will be if ARM remains customizable, cheap (from an IP perspective), and has widespread adoption. Honestly, I'm okay if RISC-V remains somewhat niche, but provides the necessary market pressure to keep non-open competitors honest. There's a meta-benefit to open standards as well.