The future of computing electronics is undoubtedly smaller hand-held devices like tablets and smartphones. As that future becomes the present, we are slowly seeing the decline of the traditional PC industry. Apparently, NVIDIA, the tech giant of the PC graphics market, sees "the writing on the wall" regarding this decline, and is investing heavily into the mobile chipset world.
Although this news isn't directly Android related, NVIDIA's chips seem to be the dominant tech in a lot of up-coming Android tablets and smartphones, so it is relevant. NVIDIA recently announced their intention to purchase the UK-based Icera, manufacturer of 3G and 4G baseband processors used in wireless devices and USB modems. Supposedly, Icera's chips are smaller, more flexible, and more efficient than the competition from Qualcomm and ST-Ericsson.
It would seem that NVIDIA isn't content to sit idle as the premier mobile graphics processor maker, but also intends to aggressively push into the rest of the mobile chipset market. This seems like a wise strategic move on their part as they are already positioned very powerfully in the mobile world, and their competition isn't as robust as what they saw in the PC world.
For the longest time NVIDIA, Intel and AMD/ATI were, and still are, battling constantly for market dominance, and it has always been a challenge for NVIDIA to compete with those two giants. Who knows, maybe soon, NVIDIA will become the "Intel" of the mobile computing world.
Source: Android.net - NVIDIA to Purchase Icera Full Press Release
