Warren East - Agenda Setters 2008

Name: Warren East

Title: ARM CEO

Position: 10    Last year: Not ranked

Why? Powering the world's mobile technology

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• Werner Vogels
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• JP Rangaswami

Earlier this year ARM passed a significant milestone, with 10 billion products containing ARM chips shipped - more than one per every person on the planet, its CEO Warren East pointed out.

The company powers a vast amount of the world's mobile devices, including something like 95 per cent of smart phones, and ships almost three billion ARM-powered processors per year.

Through its IP licensing partner programme, ARM processors are found in a range of Apple, LG, Nokia and Sony Ericsson smart phones as well as sat-nav devices, video cameras, digital TVs and the Nintendo DS portable gaming console.

It's for leading a company that powers so much of the world's tech that earns East a top spot on the list - pretty good for his Agenda Setters debut.

One judge said: "[He is] the leader of a business that is the powerful creative core that enables technological revolution after technological revolution in the mobile [space] - endlessly learning from each forward step to guide the creative energy with which to spring the next forward step."

At the helm since 2001, East is the man to lead ARM on to even bigger and better things, the panel agreed.