I wasn't around to witness the Lexra situation so I can't/won't contradict your observations.
However, I think there are a few other reasons why MIPS did not ride the wave of mobile like ARM did.
First of all, MIPS Technologies acquired mixed-signal design house Chipidea for $147m and then sold it to Synopsys for $22m after a rocky two-year integration process.
Secondly, MIPS management focused on markets like networking and home entertainment (set-top boxes, digital TVs, etc.) which did not enjoy the explosive growth of mobile.
To address the second part of your comment about MIPSfpga, this is not "an older core". It is a current-generation CPU capable of running Linux. It is used today in the Microchip PIC32 and the Samsung Artik 1 MCUs - two products that were released within the last year. Furthermore, most of these open cores implement MIPS III or IV architectures from two decades ago whereas MIPSfpga is MIPS32 Release 3. In addition, MIPSfpga implements industry-standard interfaces which make the core much easier to use on an FPGA.
However, I think there are a few other reasons why MIPS did not ride the wave of mobile like ARM did.
First of all, MIPS Technologies acquired mixed-signal design house Chipidea for $147m and then sold it to Synopsys for $22m after a rocky two-year integration process.
Secondly, MIPS management focused on markets like networking and home entertainment (set-top boxes, digital TVs, etc.) which did not enjoy the explosive growth of mobile.
To address the second part of your comment about MIPSfpga, this is not "an older core". It is a current-generation CPU capable of running Linux. It is used today in the Microchip PIC32 and the Samsung Artik 1 MCUs - two products that were released within the last year. Furthermore, most of these open cores implement MIPS III or IV architectures from two decades ago whereas MIPSfpga is MIPS32 Release 3. In addition, MIPSfpga implements industry-standard interfaces which make the core much easier to use on an FPGA.