Just three short years after the technology's original deployment, worldwide subscribers to the 4G wireless standard known as Long Term Evolution (LTE) are projected to surpass the 100-million mark this year.

Bucking the industry trend and rising three places to No. 3, Qualcomm attributed its 29.6% growth to continued adoption of smartphones and the growth of 3G and LTE technology in emerging regions, such as China and India.

Qualcomm has acquired Summit Microelectronics, a developer and provider of programmable power ICs. Qualcomm's power management roadmap will be significantly enhanced with the addition of Summit's expertise and products.

Altair Semiconductor has released a cost and feature-optimized chipset tailored for the Indian TD-LTE market, which is expected to become one of the fastest-growing LTE markets in the world.

AT&T first confirmed plans to bring a version of the One X to the US but sadly it will be a dual-core handset, not HTC's cutting-edge device run by quad-core processors. Now a new rumor has surfaced with tech site s4ru.com claiming the phone will be scooped up by Sprint.

"The contract is expected to rise to US$11 billion by the end of this year as Apple is planning to release a smaller iPad, probably with a 7.85-inch screen, and to sell more of its MacBook Air PCs using Samsung's faster SSD storage," said a Samsung official.

Qualcomm has announced the next generation of its Gobi line of wireless modems-on-a-chip.

Renesas has announced a strategic relationship with Nvidia to jointly develop a platform reference solution based on Renesas' SP2531 triple mode LTE modem and the Nvidia Tegra 3 processor.

Apple's move to standardize on Qualcomm baseband chips will be helpful in bringing LTE to the iPhone and iPad in 2012 thanks to Qualcomm's next-generation mobile device modem chips. The company announced recently that updated chips with integrated LTE and 3G support will offer greater power efficiency for mobile devices, a sticking point that has so far kept Apple from offering compatibility with high-speed LTE networks.

Once the best-selling phone in the world, the new Droid Razr will be a smartphone using the Android operating system and running on Verizon's 4G LTE network.

LightSquared said it will partner with Sharp to develop smartphones and tablets for its wholesale LTE network, another indication that despite the calls for more testing of the company's network for GPS interference, it is plowing ahead with its plans.

There have been rumors afoot about RIM working on a 4G LTE BlackBerry for a couple of years now, and the device that was intended to be released this year has been pushed to the end of the year.

One of Verizon Wireless' official Twitter accounts "announced" that Android-based LTE products are on the way.

"We are working on LTE device for next year, 2011. We think the US mobile operator will be taking some leading and pushing the LTE 4G in the US market, but however, we are seeing the rest of world will be deploying LTE network elsewhere in 2011, could be second half of 2011," said Peter Chou.

None of the companies involved in the bidding have publicly disclosed their participation. But those patents are likely what Apple is most interested in, since it's rumored that a "Verizon iPhone" will come with LTE support.

If you're waiting for the first LTE smartphone on Verizon Wireless to arrive, Verizon's CEO says it'll happen in February 2011

Earlier this year, TeliaSonera picked the same two companies to supply its faster networks using the Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology in Sweden and Norway.

The phone, which is on show at this week's Ceatec electronics show in Japan, is only a concept and Fujitsu doesn't have a firm commercialization plan at present, but it was developed with an eye to future LTE data services.

More reports on the Motorola Stingray tablet, which is scheduled for 1Q11. The Stingray reportedly will be a full 10 inches with Android 3.0 Gingerbread, 16GB of on-board storage, and Tegra 2. It will also be "hardware upgradeable to LTE," initially launching with CDMA alone.

"We believe the company has selected Qualcomm as its modem supplier for the CDMA iPhone as well as for the iPhone 5," said a managing director and analyst at Rodman & Renshaw. "The iPhone 5 will likely use a two-chip modem, allowing the company to create 3G and 4G products."