Five years ago, it became somewhat fashionable to write off Qualcomm as a spent force whose leadership would be broken once the industry moved from CDMA-based technologies, where it dominates in IPR and innovation terms, towards the more level playing field of OFDM. In 2014, few would be so negative. The firm is still in the midst of a huge transition, and will have to make the difficult adjustment to being one among many in mobile patents, rather than the firm that could call all the shots. It has amassed a strong IPR position in LTE, and has consistently been first to market with the latest technical advances, but it faces intense pressures from Chinese rivals, amid the shift of…