Corporate mergers and acquisitions - even in these turbulent economic times - follow certain trends. The selling company has usually failed to make the most of a non-core asset so decides to get out of that market, hopefully gaining some cash to reinvest or reduce its debt.

The buying company can then drive a hard bargain to get its hands on an asset that if it's sensible will be a good fit to its existing business, or if it's foolish will result in months of corporate restructuring.

In that context, mobile chip design outfit Qualcomm's decision to drop $65 million cash on AMD's handheld division probably seems a sensible deal for both parties.

AMD has never really been focused on handheld devices and since its merger with ATI has had plenty of other areas to concentrate on, and a debt pile to reduce.

Even the combined outfit hasn't made much of a splash in handheld devices, mainly as it's been championing vector graphics via the OpenVG standard rather than 3D graphics (OpenGL ES 2.0).

Qualcomm, on the other hand, has bags of cash and is already licensing IP from AMD, so despite the relative high cost of the deal - $65 million cash, subject to adjustments for employee-related expenses and a holdback for certain customary indemnification obligations - it will immediately cut some of its licensing outgoings.

Indeed, Qualcomm said it expects the deal to start adding to its earnings in the second half of calendar year 2010.

As for the future in terms of what new technologies, Qualcomm will be offering to mobile and handheld manufacturers in terms of its system-on-chip products, other handheld 3D graphics providers such as Imagination 3D and Nvidia should certainly expect more competition.

Or as the official blurb puts it...