Nokia and Qualcomm making friends is good for all

In an alliance that would have been unthinkable a year ago, Qualcomm and Nokia announced at Congress that they are joining forces to develop Symbian-based 3G devices, focusing initially on the North American market. It is the first time that the world's largest device maker and the mobile industry's largest silicon vendor have worked together on a WCDMA product. The agreement is the culmination of a deal struck in July 2008 that ended years of litigation between the two mobile heavyweights. At one stage, the ugly legal battle (over patent royalties) had threatened to stall development of the 3G devices market altogether. The new alliance is a classic case of better-late-than-never; the combination of Nokia and Qualcomm has the potential to make a formidable partnership that could ultimately benefit the entire industry. It's just a pity they couldn't have sorted out their differences earlier.

(This article is part of a series of follow-ups on Mobile World Congress 2009 from the GSMA Intelligence team.)