Nokia and Qualcomm ready to play nice because of WiMax?
By Brian White 
posted Feb 20th 2007 4:31PM
posted Feb 20th 2007 4:31PM
Qualcomm and Nokia, the two heavyweight fighters in a long and drawn out nasty battle over intellectual property rights are possibly burying the hatchet (just not in each other's backs.) Both companies are having a press conference along with Sprint Nextel a week from tomorrow (Feb. 28). Now, when you get Qualcomm and Sprint Nextel together, nothing seems out of place. Inject Nokia in there and there is something afoot -- but what? With Sprint Nextel committed to WiMax for its 4G plans and Nokia shaking hands with Sprint Nextel on that turf, maybe Nokia and Qualcomm are close to shaking hands in some form after years of issues that left Nokia holding an expensive but worthless 1xRTT bag of, well, nothing. Maybe WiMax will be the glue that reseals that relationship.
Actually, this is just a quarterly roundtable that the CDG puts on - they do these regularly with representatives of different companies talking about their vision of technology, it's not a press conference. Someone is connecting dots that aren't really there on this one.
Still, we can dream. I'd bet dollars to donuts that the only reason the E90/N95 don't have triband HSPDA is because Qualcomm developed the first chip...
@keith
It's a web cast, and without a doubt it will be sent out to the press and the moderator of the webcast is a leading wireless press publication.
Plus, press is invited to register to ask live questions via the internet during the webcast.
The title of the webcast:
CDMA2000: An Insight into the Future of 3G Devices and Services
where the only two parties participating in the webcast, Nokia and Qualcomm (not known to play nice with one another) is sure to attract some attention.
Could it all be nothing, sure it could. But with Nokias impending withdrawal in April from the CDMA device market, there are many who hold out hope for a last minute truce between Nokia and Qualcomm to keep Nokia in the CDMA handset game.
http://www.cdg.org/news/press/2007/Feb06_07ma.asp
Maybe Engadget/Engadgetmobile should register to ask a question.