Qualcomm edges big rivals in IoT patents race

When IoT patents are measured based on their likelihood to be enforced, semiconductor maker Qualcomm, which also offers smart home chips and wearables, comes out on top at the expense of Intel.

The future of IoT is likely to be powered by ARM chips. LexInnova, a consultancy company, conducted a study to find who had the most "high-strength" patents associated with IoT technology. Qualcomm was found to have 157, more than twice as many as the runner-up, LG.

High-strength patents may seem objective, but some law, business and economics professors devices published a paper in 2004 that highlighted the differences between patents that companies protect through litigation and patents that companies don't bother to protect. By raw numbers, the companies with the most IoT patents is relatively diverse. ZTE, a China company, has the third-largest number of IoT patents. Huawei comes in seventh. Qualcomm has both the most high-strength IoT patents and the most overall with 724. Intel, which has banked its future on IoT, comes in second overall, with 688 IoT patents, but falls to fifth place in the high-strength category.

While fifth place might not be bad by some standards, no China companies appear on the list of the top nine companies with high-strength IoT patents. Intel is being beat by the company's biggest competitor in mobile. ARM processors have already become the standard in mobile phones and tablets. While Intel made some gains in the market for laptop/tablet hybrids, the tablet market as a whole has not done well recently. This is why Intel has mostly discontinued its line of low-powered Atom processors.

IoT is really a fancy name for the computerization of everything, so Intel is betting a lot of money on it, and they're not the only ones. There is definitely room for more than one chip company in IoT, and Intel is looking at capturing more of the market that requires more processing power, like sports equipment.

This could also be good news for smaller China manufacturers that rely on local ARM SoC makers like MediaTek or Rockchip. If small IoT devices are all running on ARM architecture, there shouldn't be many compatibility issues for manufacturers using open-source software like Android.