I’d file this report straight into the under-reported but interesting category. When it came to CPU’s, QualComm was a nobody a few years ago – in the last two years, it became hard to find a non-Qualcomm mobile device.
The CEO of the company now stated the following according to Mobile Business:
Qualcomm’s chief executive Paul Jacobs said he sees the number of wireless chip providers shrinking either through consolidation or players disappearing, reports Dow Jones Newswires. “Consolidation will happen or people will leave the market,” he said.”We’re trying to make that happen sooner.” He also appeared to rule out the prospect of buying rival ARM.
Given that ARM is a fabless IP core vendor, and that Samsung has already all but left the market, this essentially targets one vendor: Marvell.
They bought up Intel’s assets a few years ago, and never got much out of it – Intel’s XScale CPU’s dominated the market, whereas Marvell’s new processors are almost invisible.
QualComm buying up ARM, on the other hand, would be a total GAU scenario. As ARM holds tons and tons of patents for ARM processors, it would allow QualComm to effectively stop competing chip vendors from creating ARM-based processors…
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