Qualcomm’s detractors like to portray the chip giant as a religious fanatic around 3GPP, but sometimes it behaves more like the Vicar of Bray, who pragmatically changed his religious affiliations in order to hang on to his parish. After years of sniffing at WiFi and WiMAX, the company acquired Airgo and Flarion (both pioneers of IEEE technologies) in 2006, followed by Atheros in 2011 and Wilocity in 2014, becoming a major powerhouse in WiFi. Even if, in its dream world, 3GPP platforms – and indeed, CDMA – would have remained unchallenged, in reality Qualcomm knows when to accept that another technology has turned into an opportunity too big to be missed. Its latest apparent volte-face comes in the controversial area…