>The company that developed or acquired all of modern wireless comms tech, and thus gets paid very high license fees for everything that includes anything that talks to anything else over the air.
This isn't a great summary of Qualcomm. Their cell modems are the best in the business. Apple has been working on developing their own, and were rumored to try using them in their phones this year, but it's sounding like this still won't happen because they're not up to snuff yet. One needs to only read /r/GooglePixel to find out how well Samsung's modems work, and the news there isn't good. This is true even for 5G, which Qualcomm don't have locked down in patents so well as LTE.
>Although I think they are building up the ARM SoC business because some of their key patents are about to expire?
What? Their ARM SoC business has been on the same steady path for a decade now. Apple's SoCs are better, but no one gets to buy those. Everyone who has a choice uses Qualcomm SoCs, except again, Google Pixel, which use Samsung SoCs. Not even Samsung uses Samsung SoCs in their phones anymore.
This isn't a great summary of Qualcomm. Their cell modems are the best in the business. Apple has been working on developing their own, and were rumored to try using them in their phones this year, but it's sounding like this still won't happen because they're not up to snuff yet. One needs to only read /r/GooglePixel to find out how well Samsung's modems work, and the news there isn't good. This is true even for 5G, which Qualcomm don't have locked down in patents so well as LTE.
>Although I think they are building up the ARM SoC business because some of their key patents are about to expire?
What? Their ARM SoC business has been on the same steady path for a decade now. Apple's SoCs are better, but no one gets to buy those. Everyone who has a choice uses Qualcomm SoCs, except again, Google Pixel, which use Samsung SoCs. Not even Samsung uses Samsung SoCs in their phones anymore.