Did ARM ever get a formalized platform? I remember reading that one of the major issues with adoption of ARM was that there wasn't a common platform for the CPU to interface with external devices. It was all custom and proprietary which is fine for embedded systems but not so good for desktops or consumer grade PCs.
Yes, sort of. The other problem, shared with 32 bit ARM, is that there are billions of shitty Android chips made each year, and it's very easy to take one of these, slap it into a development board, add a proprietary kernel with random blobs, and sell it for $50.
These crowd out properly designed server hardware, or anything that cares about freedom, upstream Linux, maintainability, virtualization, etc.
Is that no longer the case?