After years of living in hope that 3G would happen eventually, semiconductor suppliers once again believe that technology differentiation can win significant business in the mobile market.

It is like the mobile phone design boom of the late 1990s, but with one big difference, the mobile phone operators are calling the shots.

According to Qualcomm, a mobile operator, such as Vodafone, may specify as many as 2,000 features for the handset.

The operators know what they want the handset firms to provide, which means the manufacturers need the semiconductor suppliers to deliver and many suppliers will need help fitting the bill.

For all but a few big suppliers, and arguably that means all chip suppliers save Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, partnerships and even mergers will be needed to provide the mobile phone firms with what they demand for 4G.

Not to forget Intel’s latest mobile Internet aspirations.

For the rest, and that means NXP, Broadcom, Infineon, Mediatek, Freescale, Renesas and ST, partnerships and joint ventures are likely.

The process has begun. In April NXP tied its mobile phone chip business with that of STMicroelectronics in a new joint venture.

The mobile handset makers would welcome a third processor supplier, who can challenge the dominance of the big two. Will it be Intel, or can it be the merged ST-NXP?  

What the big two and most of the other players have in common is that they all hold an ARM processor licence.

The impact ARM has made in the mobile phone processor market is such that it has emerged as a more than credible rival to Intel.

Intel may be attacking the mobile market with its mobile Internet device focused Atom processor. But ARM has a head-start in terms of low power design and design-ins.

So whoever loses out in the 4G chipset shot-out, right now it looks like ARM will be the only certain winner.

Richard Wilson, Editor, Electronics Weekly

See also:

ARM takes on Intel for the ultra-mobile PC

We ask ARM CEO: Is Intel catching up on low power?

Electronics Weekly's focus on microprocessors, a roundup of content on microprocessor technologies and developments not related to the x86 architecture (from ARM, Texas Instruments and MIPS).