Qualcomm, the world’s biggest maker of chips for mobile phones, put an end to years of legal wrangling on Monday by settling a four-year patent dispute with rival Broadcom.

With the Broadcom settlement, Qualcomm has resolved all of the major court battles it has fought in recent years, in order to preserve a mobile phone business model where more than 90 per cent of its licensing revenues comes from royalties earned on handsets.