Today sees an announcement from Qualcomm that they will be working with Nokia in developing UMTS devices, initially for the North American market. Given that, up until a few months ago, the two companies were at legal loggerheads over the licensing of IP over 3G implementations and chipsets, we'll read this as an amicable end to the disagreement (helped, no doubt, by Nokia's one time payment of close to 2.3 billion dollars to Qualcomm in October 2008).

The devices will be based on Nokia's S60/Symbian OS software stack running on the Mobile Station Modem (MSM) chips from Qualcomm. The launch of these devices is expected in mid-2010, by which time the Symbian Foundation should be in full flow, and the devices will be compatible with that variant of the OS.

The MSM is an ARM Architecture chip, and currently can be found in an number of devices, including Kyocera, Motorola, LG and Samsung. Given the knowledge that Qualcomm has, these devices could mark the beginning of a renewed marketing push in North America from Nokia. We'll just have to wait and see.

The full press release can be found here.