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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 »

Can Qualcomm Compete As Smartphones Become Computers?

Our mobile devices are getting smarter, faster and mimicking the functionality of a full-fledged PC. As the top wireless chipmaker, Qualcomm has long been the “Intel inside” for mobile phones. But can it compete against a host of new processors with better graphics and more performance? Read More »

 
 

Mobile World Congress: Don't Call It a Phone Show

Over the last few years Mobile World Congress, the mobile phone industry trade show, has experienced a shift from being about mobile phones to being about always-on connectivity. Mobile broadband has changed the value of the mobile ecosystem and thus the players who care about it. Read More »

Squeezed Cell Networks Lead to Dealmaking

Today Pulsus and SpiderCloud, two startups making hardware for the mobile industry, scored investments. As users, application developers and carriers bump up against the technical constraints around mobile broadband’s popularity, expect more and more hardware investments and dealmaking in the mobile semiconductor and equipment worlds. Read More »

Does Location Need a Special Purpose Device?

A patent filed by Qualcomm suggests that location could be tied to a module that you could use with whatever device you want. That means location on your phone, iPod or netbook whenever you bother to insert the module. But apps makers are skeptical. Read More »

Qualcomm Leapfrogs Intel With 28-Nano Chips

As part of Qualcomm’s effort to gain an edge over Intel, the wireless chip giant plans to skip the current cutting-edge technology and go straight to making 28-nanometer chips. If done well, Qualcomm’s chips will perform better and cost less, giving it an advantage. Read More »

Marvell to Make Future Phones Run Faster

Marvell Technology said today that it’s figured out a way to deliver the first-ever quad-core ARM-based application processor for cell phones and other mobile devices. More cores equals more performance — Marvell says its quad-core ARM chips will deliver “gigahertz-plus” performance. Read More »

Viva La Wi-Fi!

Wi-Fi was hot last year and it’s only getting hotter in 2010 as the availability of personal hotspots such as the Mi-Fi and the rise of the Direct Wi-Fi standard mean that putting a Wi-Fi chip in anything makes the device more useful. Read More »

Can the Cloud Help Drive Mobile TV Adoption?

The mobile TV market has been a disappointment for years, but emerging efforts from cable companies and content providers to make entertainment available everywhere via the web may finally drive adoption. Will next year finally be the year for mobile television? Read More »

Qualcomm Must Look Beyond CDMA as Regulators Lurk

Qualcomm  may have to change its licensing agreements related to its chips in Japan after the country’s Fair Trade Commission today ordered it to change the terms of those agreements that give it free access to patents held by manufacturers that use its chips. … Read More »

Qualcomm Tries to Reposition FLO Network As a Mobile CDN

Qualcomm’s MediaFLO mobile television network hasn’t met the chipmaker’s expectations, according to COO Len Lauer, whom I spoke with at the Mobilize 09 event last week in San Francisco. I interviewed Lauer about Qualcomm’s FLO network for broadcasting mobile television, about which he said, … Read More »

Analyst Finds 150 Million "Missing" Handsets

The Linley Group released a report last night in which it claims that about 150 million handsets are missing from the official calculations of phones sold in 2008. The research firm notes that while some 1.2 billion cell phones shipped last year, 1.43 billion … Read More »

More Must Reads

Verizon and Qualcomm said today that their new joint venture, which will provide access to Verizon’s network for machines and other embedded wireless applications, will be called nPhase. The name comes from the original M2M company that Qualcomm acquired in 2006, and … Read More »

Texas Instruments last year said it would exit the wireless baseband business (it will still make custom radios for clients, but will dump its catalog of wireless baseband chips), and today the Wall Street Journal notes the effect this is likely to have … Read More »

Wireless dealmaking has remained a fairly bright spot during the recession, according to an overview of venture investment and M&A in the industry released today by Rutberg & Co. The boutique investment bank focuses on digital media and wireless deals, and says it’s seen the … Read More »

Google’s Chrome OS may or may not make it, but the attempt shows how far the computer industry has come from a bulky PC chained to a desk by its power cord and Ethernet cable. The computer is evolving from those dinosaurs to a smaller, mobile … Read More »

Nokia, Motorola, Research in Motion, Apple (yes, even Apple) and six other cell phone makers have agreed to a European Commission request to develop a universal charger. The agreement was announced today by the the EC. The new handsets will use Micro-USB … Read More »

Qualcomm today announced the opening of a factory to make its mirasol displays, and a Wi-Fi chip designed for home networking — both efforts to keep the company a top chipmaker even as carriers migrate from the CDMA technology that provides so much of … Read More »

Qualcomm isn’t going to cede the mobile computing market to Intel and its success with netbooks, the CDMA powerhouse made clear today while laying out its vision of mobile computing. The vision consists of what Qualcomm is calling a smartbook. But combining the words smartphone … Read More »

Via Licensing, the group that manages patent pools for the tru2way cable standard and the Near Field Communications radio standard, yesterday issued a call for all patents related to the Long Term Evolution 4G wireless standard — the second such attempt to create … Read More »

Qualcomm and Broadcom, two of the primary communications chip firms, agreed today to end their long-standing intellectual property feud, with Qualcomm agreeing to pay out $891 million to Broadcom over four years. Qualcomm, which owns the intellectual property related to the CDMA 3G wireless standard, … Read More »

The Open Mobile Video Coalition said today that it will begin broadcasting over-the-air mobile television to devices in Washington, D.C., later this summer. Also today, Qualcomm, which operates a competing over-the-air television technology, said it’s licensed its FLO software to ProTelevision Technologies (formerly Philips TV … Read More »

As the Federal Communications Commission tries to formulate a National Broadband plan, wireless carriers are seeking to classify their networks as an acceptable alternative to wired broadband, especially in rural areas. At the same time, those wireless carriers are also trying to convince the FCC … Read More »

Intel made a series of announcements last night that push its low-power Atom processor closer to the smartphone side of the mobile computing spectrum. It announced more details of its Moorestown platform aimed at mobile Internet devices. The platform is coming in 2010 and includes … Read More »

Verizon has been aggressively pushing its fourth generation wireless network plans, which would bring Long Term Evolution, or LTE, to 20-35 markets by the end of 2010. But in the interconnected world of telecommunications, the desires of a vendor can be waylaid if all the … Read More »

Qualcomm today trumpeted that its MediaFLO mobile over-the-air television service has launched in three new markets; Atlantic City, N.J.; Greensboro, N.C. and Wilmington, Del., now have access to MediaFLO and the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show on certain AT&T or Verizon phones! But the trumpeting … Read More »

Our mobile phones are getting smarter, even as our laptops are getting dumber. Instead of packing fast processors into a notebook, PC makers are stripping them down into netbooks and other devices they can sell for less. Meanwhile, our mobile phones are looking more like mini … Read More »

GSM-based technologies account for a whopping 81 percent of the world’s 4 billion mobile subscriptions, according to numbers released today by Wireless Intelligence. Coming in as the runner-up is Qualcomm’s CDMA, with 10 percent of the world’s subscribers, 100 million of whom are in North … Read More »

Texas Instruments is expected to this week release details of its next-generation application processor, the OMAP 4 family of chips, which has made my love for Nvidia’s APX25000 processor grow cold. I’m faithless when a chipmaker shows me the prospect of 1080p video playback, 10 times … Read More »

Next week, while most Americans are lounging about in honor of President’s Day, the people responsible for your mobile phones, netbooks and cellular networks will converge on Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress trade show. Check back on Monday for clues as to what type … Read More »

Symbian said today that 14 new companies, including Hewlett-Packard, MySpace, Qualcomm and SanDisk, have joined its foundation. This brings the number of companies that have signed up to use the mobile operating system’s platform to 78, putting it ahead of the 47 members of … Read More »

Today Intel detailed its plans to stop focusing on horsepower and think about the whole car. The chipmaker has decided to stop pushing Gigahertz (basically, how fast your computer can think), and start integrating radios in one package, or on a single chip — a … Read More »

The House voted today to approve a four-month delay to the transition from analog to digital television signals, making the new June 12 deadline a near certainty. The Senate approved its own version of the bill last week, and since both bills are in accord, … Read More »

Updated: On Monday, Qualcomm announced a location-based recommendation engine powered by Xiam, which it acquired last March. The service (offered through carriers) takes demographic information, a user’s personal preferences and geographic location, and serves up lists of places and events that the user might … Read More »

Members of the House this afternoon failed to pass a bill that would delay the transition from analog to digital television signals by four months. Without House approval, the deadline for the switch stands at Feb. 17. Qualcomm is undoubtedly rejoicing, as it stands … Read More »

The Senate yesterday approved a bill to delay the transition to digital television signals until June 12, and the House is expected to approve similar legislation today. While Qualcomm may be gnashing its teeth over the passage of the delay, which the company says … Read More »

ABI Research today issued a new report in which it forecasts shipments of netbooks will reach 35 million in 2009, and 139 million in 2013. Back in September, the firm released a report saying it expected 200 million ultramobile devices to be shipped by … Read More »

Qualcomm, mindful of how much it stands to lose if the transition to DTV is delayed, yesterday sent a letter to several legislators begging them to force nine TV stations in Boston, Miami, San Francisco and Houston to stop transmitting their broadcasts on the analog … Read More »

Qualcomm said today it has purchased AMD’s handheld graphics unit (acquired during AMD’s $5.4 billion acquisition of graphics chipmaker ATI Technologies) for $65 million. The deal shows that AMD is betting big on full-performance machines, from servers to laptops — rejecting its rival Intel’s  move … Read More »

When President-elect Barack Obama asked Congress to delay the transition that will force broadcasters to switch from analog TV signals to digital ones last week, we noted that the move could cause trouble for companies planning to use the newly available spectrum for new technologies. … Read More »

Today, graphics chipmaker Nvidia said it expects its fourth-quarter sales to come in 40-50 percent lower than the $897.7 million it posted in the third quarter. That puts its revenue estimate between $448.9 million and $538.6 million — a huge drop from last year’s Read More »

President-elect Barack Obama is asking Congress to delay the transition that will force the nation’s TV broadcasts to switch from analog to digital signals. Depending on how long the delay is, it could affect the deployment of several services destined for the spectrum … Read More »

Qualcomm said today it is running Google’s Android platform on its Snapdragon chipset designed for netbooks and mobile Internet devices. This isn’t earth-shattering since Snapgragon is an ARM-based chip, and another Qualcomm ARM-based chip powers the G1 Android phone. Qualcomm is also … Read More »

Samsung Electronics is making its own WiMAX and LTE baseband chips for wireless handsets, according to an article in EETimes. The move by the Korean electronics maker shows how much opportunity it sees as the wireless industry transitions to 4G, and the fortunes of the … Read More »

After winning the right to offer a satellite and cellular-based mobile voice and data service, raising $500 million in capital and restructuring its ownership, Skyterra (formerly Mobile Satellite Ventures) is getting ready for what it hopes will be two game-changing years. The company … Read More »

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