Nvidia just announced that it has acquired Icera, a UK company that most of you never heard, which is apparently a leader in basedband and RF technology. According to Nvidia, this is the biggest acquisition ever and Nvidia hopes to be a bit more competitive to Qualcomm, the market leader in this area. Icera has 550 patents and a “top-performing baseband processors for 3G and 4G cellular phones and tablets.”
Nvidia will offer Tegra processors with its own baseband processors and it hopes to get more market share, and obviously more money. The market for baseband processors is worth estimated $15 billion a year and Nvidia wants a piece of that. It becomes very clear that Tegra is Nvidia’s commitment but at this time the most money still comes from graphics, especially from top performing Quadro market that is at the same Nvidia’s safety net.
Let's see how much actual money can Nvidia make out of this acquisition, but in the long term it looks like a good move for them.