Every time I google I find another interesting story that was lost in regular news: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/02/fujitsu_nec_docomo_mobile_chip_venture/ At the start of this year it was supposed to be Samsung, Docomo, Fujitsu, NEC, and Panasonic in alliance to develop an LTE alternative chipset to Qualcomm. Then only a few months later that alliance fell apart. Now beginning in August Fujitsu, NEC, and Docomo are allying by themselves to form a new joint venture.

So where does that leave Samsung? Perhaps Samsung has already made its peace with Qualcomm, as indicated by its producing Windows 8 Phones, with supposedly many more on the way customized for the US market, and by its using Qualcomm's SoCs in its Galaxy SIIIs sold in the US. But it is hard to imagine Samsung being satisfied with being dictated to in this one technology versus its apparent mission to acquire competence in every other aspect of manufacturing electronics.

Also to remember how we got here, backwards compatibility with previous generation radio tech is how next generation tech is sold. Qualcomm had an inherent advantage over say Nokia in the US at least because of Qualcomm's role in CDMA. The patent fight between Qualcomm and Nokia was caused by the expiration of a 15-year cross-licensing agreement. So now years later we see Qualcomm leveraging backwards compatibility with 3G or 2G either CDMA or GSM-based while pushing its own LTE chipsets. The one limitation is how many frequencies can one chipset support, which presumably is increased with each process shrink. Whoever controls the previous generation with mobile radio technology should have a great shot at controlling the next generation.

And at that point governments start making it their business much more than which phones are being sold.

I can't believe how terrible the mainstream coverage is of the current smartphone news. Why is no one analyzing the real technological battle being waged and the apparent winner, Qualcomm.

Half of the summaries of the announcement simply say that the Ativ S is "dual core," as opposed to I suppose "quad core." What does that mean? I instantly thought, are they using the Qualcomm processor, perhaps even the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4? But then I also knew that since it was a Windows Phone, there is quite the chance it has to be Qualcomm, the one maker Microsoft currently supports.

For this generation of phones, not only is Qualcomm making many of the baseband chips, certainly those for LTE multimode, but they're also successfully selling the entire SoC even in European markets? For Android, Samsung has already had to produce different phones same model Galaxy SIII, one for the US with Qualcomm processors, one elsewhere with its presumably preferred own ARM processor.

Articles such as http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2009/02/nokia-st-ericsson-qualcomm-broadcombye-bye-texas-instrument-and-hello-to-the-new-nokia/ claim that in the previous generation "Nokia was designing the core chipset and letting Texas Instruments finish the integration and physically produce the chips: Nokia has been mastering the whole hardware IP of its phones, and has not been relying on generic chipsets for the vast majority of its production, with all the margins this implies ..." Qualcomm and Nokia settled their lawsuit in July 2008, but look what has happened since then. Now it is Nokia that for the Lumias and presumably for their next generation Windows Phones are having to rely on Qualcomm processors and chipsets.

The mainstream press for some reason has missed the single biggest IP story the past decade, one that has destroyed at least one major company Nokia and has established another Qualcomm as a re-emerging hegemon on a world-wide scale. It should be obvious that if one tries to predict the future, the Chinese at least are not likely to meekly accept a Qualcomm monopoly without somehow getting their own capacity to export similar technology, which then leads one to read about China's TD-LTE ongoing effort, and other companies trying to partner with the Chinese in one last stand against Qualcomm.

There's a lot more going on in mobile IP struggles than what is happening with a certain company with a fruit in its name.

Relax, Samsung won. With these damages in a US court in Apple's backyard capping the fine, Samsung will pay less than it does for Microsoft's patents over the lifetime of Samsung's phone business. Samsung is actually making profits now, hefty ones, so they will be able to just keep expanding and modernizing their fabs such as theirs in Austin, Texas, and Samsung will keep being able to churn out even the highest-end phones (most recent ones I believe are not covered by Apple's design IP).

Qualcomm crushing Nokia in forcing a settlement in 2008 entirely in Qualcomm's favor is the patent lawsuit of the century. Nokia transferred patents to Qualcomm and agreed to pay continuing cash payments to Qualcomm. Qualcomm in a few years time had a complete ARM SoC solution and is continuing to expand its baseband chip capabilities both for backwards compatibility and forwards supporting various LTE frequencies. Nokia months after the settlement dropped its support for WiMAX, then a couple of years later was forced to use Qualcomm's SoC just to produce the Lumia Windows phones. That day was the real end of Nokia. In one instant Nokia's entire phone system, from operating system down to the hardware, was finished for the future.

Depending on the version of Evangelion, the researchers may have just located the Lance of Longinus and perhaps the resting place of Kaworu Nagisa.