The smartphone processor market is looking a little less competitive than it did at the beginning of the year. A team of heavy-hitters in the semiconductor industry is scrapping plans to team up to produce mobile microprocessors. Fujitsu Limited, Fujitsu Semiconductor Limited, NEC Corporation, Panasonic Mobile Communications Co., Ltd. and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. all signed an agreement late last year with mobile operator NTT DoCoMo.
NTT DoCoMo wanted to establish a fabless semiconductor venture to create small, high-power mobile processors for smartphones and tablets, with a focus on chips for LTE and LTE-Advanced standards. If successful, the Asian venture could have probably fielded some significant competition for companies like Qualcomm, Broadcom and nVidia, which have dominated the mobile processor space to date. But apparently it was hard for the players to agree on how to divide the research, production, compensation, or all of the above. NTT DoCoMo had said it wanted a plan for how the company would operate by the end of March, and since no consensus was reached by that deadline it is dissolving the venture.
