Samsung builts thier own 4G Chips

Samsung is one of the largest handset manufacturers in the world, and it currently uses chips from the likes of Broadcom , Infineon, and Qualcomm. But the company already has experience building its own application processors, and it wants to reduce the amount of patent royalties it has to pay.

By manufacturing and using their own chips for LTE and WiMAX phones/PDAs, Samsung avoids having to pay the middle man - a chip-maker like Qualcomm - and can thus theoretically get the phones to market cheaper. Competition in situations like this is excellent for us consumers, as it forces all of the involved companies to work harder and create better, more affordable technology.

Samsung will likely still have to rely on many Qualcomm chips for the next few years, as the transition to 4G networks will take awhile. But Samsung may find room to operate in the mobile chip space, as Texas Instruments said earlier this year it would sell off its wireless baseband division. Freescale also said it would consider selling its wireless chip business.

For Qualcomm, though, this likely not considered such good news. Since abandoning their own 4G plans Qualcomm has dedicated themselves to LTE-related technology, including chips for handsets - they just lost a major customer!