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Qualcomm can’t find enough capacity to manufacture chips designed for mobile phones. These troubles will become more common as the physics that govern how we make semiconductors buckles under the demands of our increasingly mobile lives, where we demand low power and high performance. Read More »

Intel has taken the top spot when it comes to semiconductor market share, making 15.6 percent of the overall chips sold in the world, according to IHS iSuppli. This year it made more money on more products — achieving a market share it hasn’t seen … Read More »

 
 

Soon, there might be WiFi in everything around you. Earlier this morning, Atheros, a division of Qualcomm launched a new very low power consuming WiFi chip, AR4100P, that is focused on what is commonly known as the Internet of Things. Read More »

Broadcom is expected to show off silicon that offers 1.3 gigabit Wi-Fi at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show to help prepare home networks for the era of whole-home video streaming. The multi-gigabit Wi-Fi offers a 2x improvement over today’s top Wi-Fi data rates. Read More »

Imagine all these as cores on one chip. The industry is.

Asian chip manufacturers and NTT DoCoMo will create a joint venture to build mobile phone chips. The joint venture poses a threat to Qualcomm, but the subtext here is that as mobile phones rise in prominence, chip making is turning on its head. Read More »

Qualcomm and Verizon are both proposing to trick out healthcare with some wireless connectivity. Qualcomm launched its new 2net cloud and mobile biometric information monitoring and sharing platform, while Verizon is developing mobile video communications technologies that could enable the virtual house call. Read More »

Did you hear the iPhone 4S saw pre-bookings of a million devices on day one? That’s not only good news for Apple, but also for its carrier partners: AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. And they aren’t the only ones cashing in on the iPhone 4S bonanza. Read More »

Faster in-home Wi-Fi is only a year or two away, says Craig Barratt, president of Qualcomm Atheros, who said next generation Wi-Fi could deliver gigabit speeds making it better and faster. This is good because the technology is the work-horse of home networking. Read More »

The falling fortunes of Symbian, the chaos as WebOS withers, and hiccups at BlackBerry are pretty visible signs of the upheavals in the mobile operating systems. The change obviously is because of the rise of Internet and touch centric operating systems. Is Brew OS next? Read More »

Intel is very serious about low power chips, although it won’t have them until 2013. The company showed off the long-rumored Haswell chips at its developer forum on Tuesday, which it says can can run all day and offer a 20x reduction in power. Read More »

Microsoft and Intel unveiled initiatives Tuesday that show how the Wintel partners are trying to separately navigate a new post-PC world. Microsoft unveiled Windows 8, which will work on ARM-based tablets and computers while Intel announced a partnership with Google to optimize its chips for Android. … Read More »

WebKit technology is what powers some of the top browsers (especially mobile) today. While Apple and Google are its most visible champions, the support for WebKit and ancillary technologies is coming from unlikely quarters such as Amazon and Boxee. Here’s its new BFF. Read More »

More Must Reads

Qualcomm demonstrated an Augmented Reality application that lets people point their smartphone camera at a DVD box and instantly pull up trailers for the movie inside. It’s a simple, easy to use application that shows off the practical power of Augmented Reality. Read More »

Mobile phone manufacturer HTC has purchased VIA Semiconductor’s graphics business. The deal is indicative of the need for compelling graphics on mobiles as well as an admission that mobile device makers may get an edge if they can bring some silicon capabilities in house. Read More »

Apple is joining the board of the Bluetooth standards organization as the group focuses the latest iteration of Bluetooth on the market for fitness and health sensor data from mobile devices. But can Bluetooth beat out a variety of other standards hoping win in bioinformatics? Read More »

Stealthy startup SuVolta has pioneered an improvement in the chip-manufacturing process that will help cut the power usage of semiconductors by half while maintaining their performance. The process, which it plans to license, changes a few of the ingredients used to make chips. Read More »

Mobile video is here to stay whether it’s chatting with friends via Skype or streaming movies from Netflix. Even Adobe’s Flash player has a place in the Apple-definedpost-PC era judging by several announcements showing application providers and chipmakers marrying various video codecs to their silicon. Read More »

Mobile hardware is progressing at a blistering pace, but to deliver the type of user experiences enabled by awesome hardware software must keep pace. This goes beyond the need for innovations in OSes and applications, to the underlying software that ties everything together. Read More »

If you didn’t think computing’s future was both visual and mobile, then Nvidia’s decision to buy wireless radio startup Icera clinches it. The $367 million cash deal is setting Nvidia up for a competitive battle with Qualcomm in the mobile application processor market. Read More »

The next generation of navigation chips for mobile phones may take advantage of Russia’s answer to GPS. Qualcomm, Broadcom and ST-Ericsson are reporteadly building GPS chips with support for Russia’s Glasnoss satellite system, which could improve location tracking inside devices, especially in urban areas. Read More »

When it comes to mobile devices, the gigahertz race is just beginning. Here’s why phones and tablets will need 4 GHz or even 10 GHz processors. The answers range from gesture controls to virtualization, but the computer of the future is mobile, connected and fast. Read More »

Qualcomm introduced a new peer-to-peer communication technology today to allow devices to connect to one another to share broadband speeds. Dubbed, FlashLinq the technology is one of several attempt to change the way devices connect–creating a more distributed and more resilient network. Read More »

Our phones have shifted from devices designed for phone calls to computers that connect us to the web, and in the years ahead they will also become the means people capture physical and analog data about the world around them and transfer it to the web. … Read More »

They say, when it comes to technology, a lot can happen in a month. Indeed! Being offline for three weeks, I have come back to a different tech landscape which means Eric Schmidt is no longer running Google and even the Facebook movie is a smash-hit. Read More »

As the network rises in importance, Qualcomm wants to give every piece of it on the consumer side a sliver of intelligence (and maybe even an application processor in items such as set-top-boxes or residential gateways) and take a cut of the licensing revenue in return. … Read More »

Qualcomm is reportedly in talk to buy Atheros, a rival wireless chipmaker in a deal valued at $3.5 billion, according to the New York Times. The deal enables Qualcomm to move beyond its cellular base and into wireless technologies gaining ground in the home and elsewhere. Read More »

FLO TV, Qualcomm’s mobile video network is expected to be shut down in March 2011. The San Diego-based chip maker is selling the 700 MHz spectrum that propped up the nationwide mobile video network to AT&T for $1.925 billion, a move that help AT&T’s 4G efforts. Read More »

Two months after Qualcomm decided to shut down its FLO TV service comes some good news for subscribers: The company will pro-rated refunds for the portable television service, and also give money back on device purchases. Too bad my HD-DVD player didn’t get the same treatment. Read More »

The effort by broadcasters to bring an over the air televison (like a mobile phone version of a Sony WatchMan) continues with a group of 12 broadcasters today announcing plans to upgrade TV stations in 20 markets so they can deliver live video to portable devices. … Read More »

Qualcomm announced plans for the 2011 next-generation Snapdragon processor, making this year’s chips look stale. The new Snapdragon promises five-times-greater performance, a fourfold boost in graphics and multi-mode support for both 3G and LTE networks, all with a 75 percent reduction in power use. Read More »

Two noted analysts are predicting good times for Qualcomm, and not just because the chipmaker provides the processing and connectivity for many of the top-rated Android handsets. Qualcomm is ready to add sales of 10 million more chips per quarter by powering the CDMA Apple iPhone. Read More »

Fundamental changes in networking and computing are leading to new business models, new services and shifts in corporate and consumer behavior. It’s also leading to a lot of M&A activity as companies jockey for position before the ongoing technology shift settles into the new status quo. Read More »

Broadcom is getting into the 4G cellular radio game with its planned acquisition of chipmaker Beceem announced today. Broadcom, which makes a variety of radios used ion cell phones, computers and other electronics said it will pay $316 million for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup. Read More »

The Qualcomm Innovation Center today announced it has purchased iSkoot, a San Francisco-based startup that offers mobile application services primarily to feature phones. With the acquisition, Qualcomm can feed feature phones with data-friendly proxy services, RSS, email, VoIP functions, real-time notifications and social networking software. Read More »

While augmented reality proponents have tried to push the edge of the technology with limited success, they’re now making a concerted effort to empower developers to incorporate AR into their apps. It’s a bet that developers can help AR can finally find a home in consumer’s … Read More »

Qualcomm, the San Diego-based chip maker is going to finally see its much vaunted Mirasol color displays come to market in early 2011. The displays were supposed to launch in 2010. Read More »

As the demand on wireless networks increase thanks to more data consumption and more smart phones how can operators manage it, and will LTE be enough are the questions facing wireless operators as well as those building products as mobile devices meet cloud based applications. Read More »

It’s not just the bandwidth on mobile networks that slows your mobile browsing down; sometimes it’s the processor that prevents your phone from providing the full and best mobile experience, Steve Mollenkopf, EVP and general manager of CDMA Technologies at Qualcomm, said at Mobilize today. Read More »

Nine months after Apple introduced the iPad, Qualcomm has finally admitted that the smartbook market it envisioned is essentially dead. Amid much criticism, I explained in January how Apple beat everyone to this market and that it simply wouldn’t matter what features iPad was missing. Read More »

An HTC smartphone with multiple cores is reportedly in the works, based on results found from a benchmark testing website. A powerful chip — likely from Qualcomm — would be welcome in smartphones, but might be better suited to Android tablets compete against Apple’s iPad. Read More »

Qualcomm has much to fear from Intel, which is attempting to gain a foothold in the mobile market even as Qualcomm looks upmarket to computers. However, MediaTek, a Taiwanese baseband provider that today signed an agreement to license LTE technology, should have Qualcomm more worried. Read More »

In an effort to gain a toehold in the smartphone business, Intel is inching closer to acquiring the wireless business of German chip maker, Infineon. Analysts believe that this deal is likely to have a big impact on the wireless chip industry. Read More »

Qualcomm is looking at options for its MediaFLO mobile television service, which represents an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars but never performed as well as the chipmaker hoped. In late June I sat down with Paul Jacobs, Qualcomm’s CEO, who discussed MediaFLO at length. Read More »

Qualcomm is joining Sematech, an organization advancing research for semiconductor manufacturing, and is the first chip company that doesn’t manufacture its chips to do so. When a fabless chip company helps fund R&D on next generation manufacturing, it’s an indication that Moore’s Law is in trouble. Read More »

China Telecom is going forward with a plan to upgrade its existing mobile network to EVDO Rev. B. With 56 million subscribers on the China Telecom network, Qualcomm’s 3G royalty stream will keep earning checks for now, just as the COO had hoped last year. Read More »

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