Nvidia has joined forces with patent-portfolio buyer Intellectual Ventures to jointly purchase nearly 500 wireless communications patents from IPWireless. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed but we do know that the patents are related to 4G LTE technology.
As per the agreement, IPWireless will retain perpetual, royalty-free access to all of the patents sold. IPWireless develops 3G and 4G wireless broadband technology as well as chipsets and network infrastructure. Nvidia and Intellectual Ventures will split the acquired property with Nvidia licensing the rights to the patents they didn’t acquire.
In an effort to widen their reach, Nvidia acquired mobile baseband processor developer Icera last year for $367 million. The move now allows the graphics company to develop the applications processor, the Tegra SoC, and the baseband processor in-house and essentially double their revenue opportunity per device. This allows OEMs to more easily satisfy requirements for mobile products as they will have one less company to work with.
Nvidia posted Q1 revenue and profit figures late last week. Both numbers were down from last year but revenue still topped analyst estimates and an optimistic outlook for the next quarter sent shares up nearly 10 percent.
The company blamed the less-than-stellar numbers on low production levels of Kepler GPUs. Nvidia chief Jen-Hsun Huang said that his company and foundry partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company underestimated the demand for Kepler and simply couldn’t fulfill all orders.
The GPU player has forecasted second quarter revenues to be between $990 million and $1.05 billion.
