Battle lines drawn
This interview was conducted before Intel and Nokia announced their ‘strategic relationship' but we were able to get the following statement from Bill Davidson, SVP of global marketing and investor relations at Qualcomm, on the news:
"The opportunities continue to grow in wireless, where Qualcomm has long been a recognized industry leader. We are not surprised to see other companies pursuing this market. The announcement between Nokia and Intel made today does not affect our current working relationship with Nokia. We anticipate jointly developed devices to launch beginning in mid-2010 and well into the future."
Nokia has had a pretty strained relationship with Qualcomm in the past, primarily due to having to pay Qualcomm whenever it sells a 3G device. In July 2008 litigation between the companies was settled when Nokia agreed to pay Qualcomm for a 15 year license to use all Qualcomm's patents, which included a lump-sum payment of €1.7 billion.
That must have stuck in Nokia's throat a tad, and must surely have made it all the more eager to get chummy with the company that's positioning itself to take on Qualcomm in the smartphone chipset market for years to come. The fact that Intel is investing heavily in a future alternative to 3G - WiMAX - won't have escaped Nokia's attention either, even though it has a lot invested in LTE as a 4G technology itself.
On top of that Nokia has found itself in the unfamiliar position of being an also-ran in the smartphone market, while companies like Apple, RIM, Samsung and HTC, which embrace the ARM ecosystem and operating systems other than its favoured Symbian, get all the headlines.
So maybe the Intel/Nokia announcement represented a drawing up of the battle lines for tomorrow's smart mobile devices market, with Intel and Nokia on one side and the ARM ecosystem, led by Qualcomm, on the other. It promises to be a hell of a fight.
