A Tale of Three Companies ...

Hopefully most of you are aware that there are two major players in video chipsets currently.  AMD (which used to be ATI) and Nvidia.  A lot of the older computer nerds out there will remember there used to be a third, 3dfx.  3dfx invented a graphics API called Glide and manufactured a chipset to run it that was superioir to both Nvidia and ATI's offerings in the 90's.  Now, many of you are probably wondering, "Why haven't I ever heard of 3dfx?".

That's where this cautionary tale hits a curve.  You see, back in the 90's, 3dfx sued Nvidia for patent infringement on it's Glide graphics cards.  This wasn't a patent troll suit like companies use today, this was real infringement.  The reason you've never heard of 3dfx is because Nvidia counter sued 3dfx in order to try and force them to settle.  Nvidia had much deeper pockets than 3dfx did and 3dfx wasn't able to weather the storm.  Nvidia waited until 3dfx was low in cash and then proceeded to buy them out in a forced takeover.  Once they owned the company, they immediately disbanded it.  It was much easier to buy them out than to compete with them.

So now rather than a tale of three companies, there is a tale of only two.  Graphics cards of course became more expensive after that as there was less competition.  The reason I'm pointing this out is that Samsung has market capital of roughly $200 billion dollars.  Apple on the other hand has a market capital of $420 billion.  If Apple can continue to file these patent troll suits and damage Samsung's brand through the courts, how long will it be before Apple is Nvidia buying out Samsung/3dfx?  What exactly would the future be like with only one company that makes mobile technology and no one having deep enough pockets to compete with them?