Japanese companies team up to build own chips, reduce reliance on Qualcomm

When it comes to processors for smartphones, there are a handful of companies that do it. The big names are probably Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and NVIDIA, although it seems at the moment Qualcomm is dominating the market. Not content with relying on one company to produce their chipsets, a group of Asian companies are coming together to start developing their own in order to reduce their reliance on the company.

The companies in question are NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Fujitsu, NEC and Panasonic Mobile Communications, and according to reports, they are currently in negotiations of a possibility of a joint venture with operations starting as early as next year. The costs will be shared and should they decide to sell their chipsets outside of the alliance, the earnings will also be shared among the parties.

However this is probably more relevant in Japan as the deal seems to be largely centered around Japanese organizations, save for Samsung, and considering how most Japanese handsets rarely make it out of the country into other markets such as the US, for now it looks like US handset manufacturers will still continue using Qualcomm (among other companies) for their chipsets, but who knows what the future will hold?