Terminology aside, here’s why this latest iteration of Wi-Fi is so cool:

1. It’s fast. The standard can deliver up to 3.6 Gbps around the home, although initial chips offer 1.81.3 Gbps. The current top-of-the-line Wi-Fi chips (802.11n) top out at 600 Mbps.
2. It’s designed for video. The technology uses the 5 gigahertz band as opposed to the 2.4 gigahertz band. The gigahertz band has wider channels to deliver more capacity and competes with fewer other wireless devices, which means the channels can carry more data such as fat high-definition and maybe even 3-D video streams.
3. It’s designed for multiple devices and concurrent streams. Those wider channels also mean a home can support more devices trying to send lots of data, such as sending multiple, concurrent HD video streams around the home, while someone else plays a game or video conferences. So while you might not think you need a gigabit home network without a gigabit pipe leading to your home, if you’re streaming cached content from a hard drive or another device, this helps.
4. It’s more power-efficient. The wider channels allow for more data to travel over the network, which means downloads take less time. At that point, the radio powers down to save on battery life or power. This doesn’t help when streaming, but would be good for keeping devices and hard drives synced.
5. It goes the distance. The physics of transmitting data using airwaves over distances and through certain materials doesn’t change, but because the standard can deliver faster speeds from the router, folks will get proportionately faster speeds as they move away from the router in their homes and offices. It also uses beamforming technology (basically, it compresses the signal like a laser compresses light to make it more powerful) to better pass through buildings, especially through those made of concrete. The end result is a better signal — even if it must pass through a few walls — and a decent end-user experience.

Broadcom expects to start shipping chips in the middle of this year and appearing in a wide variety of products from phones and laptops to set-top-boxes and home routers that will ship in the second half of the year. In November, Quantenna, a chipmaker startup that has raised more than $60 million, announced its own 802.11 ac chips, and in September, I spoke with Craig Barratt, president of Qualcomm Atheros about that chipmaker’s vision for the next generation of Wi-Fi.

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The joint venture company, leveraging the six investing companies’ strong backgrounds in cellular communication technology and vast experience in application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) design and foundry manufacturing, will develop feature-rich, small-size, low-power-consumption semiconductor products equipped with modem functionality. The joint venture company will focus on developing products for LTE and LTE-Advanced mobile communication standards. The products will be sold in markets globally.

This means these companies are confident they can build a better chip than industry giants such as Qualcomm, but it’s also an admission they must work together if they don’t want to miss the wireless opportunity. That’s an opportunity chip firms can’t afford to ignore.

These companies will establish the joint venture by the end of March 2012. It looks like they will integrate the application processors with the modem and other silicon on a system on a chip. Qualcomm is well-known for its mobile chip integration capabilities. Beyond Qualcomm, the announcement is a reminder of how mobile is redefining everything, including the staid world of chips, where former mortal enemies are now part of a joint venture.

The consortium is also a tactical admission by the Japanese that they alone don’t have the technical wherewithal to face the mobile onslaught being unleashed by U.S.-based companies such as Broadcom, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Google and Apple. Japanese handset makers are increasingly marginalized in the global market because of their own unique mobile ecosystem, which prevents them from achieving large economies of scale.

Mobile is not PC

Intel's mobile phone reference design.

When PCs and servers ruled the roost, Intel has a lock on the market thanks to its x86 architecture. It let AMD follow, but never let it lead, creating a dynamic for the industry that has led to a lack of innovation in hardware beyond the needs of the mass market. AMD pushed the envelope with innovations such as HyperTransport, and being the first to build 64-bit chips, but it was never able to outspend or out-compete Intel.

The mobile world is different. Chip firms start with the same basic ARM instruction set licensed by the British company of the same name, and then innovate from there. There are hundreds of ARM licensees in various segments of the market. Some companies integrate their application processors (the brains) with the radio (the voice) of the phone, while others use separate chips. Qualcomm, for example, is famous for integrating its Snapdragon processor with its radios, and does it well enough that it has become the top baseband chip vendor in the world. But this is a game anyone can play, because no one has locked down the license for the architecture like Intel had with x86.

Even Intel is seeking a baseband advantage, buying up Infineon’s wireless business in January so it had the radio component to sit next to its Atom chips. The jury is out on Intel making it in this competitive mobile world, but it can’t afford not to try. Meanwhile, formerly huge players, such as Texas Instruments, which exited the baseband business in 2008, seems to be losing the marketing battle with its OMAP line of chips. And players such as Nvidia (which bought its own mobile radio company) and Broadcom are seeking their entrée into the market as they realize the mobile device is going to be bigger than the PC ever was.

Back to DoCoMo & Co.

Apple's A5, manufactured by Samsung.

The news that NTT DoCoMo is eager to get in on the mobile game with some kind of joint venture is odd only in that an operator is leading the pack. However, Apple’s success with its A4 and A5 processors shows how deep vertical integration (owning everything from the chip to the app store) can profit a company, and Apple may also indicate why NTT DoCoMo is involved. Currently, Apple’s A5 chips are manufactured by Samsung, although Samsung’s rising prominence in the Android ecosystem has frayed the relationship. Perhaps NTT DoCoMo helps shield Samsung from the wrath of Apple as their co-opetition becomes more fierce.

And Samsung has long worked on radio chips to help it decrease its reliance on Qualcomm, so the idea that it’s part of this venture isn’t all that crazy. The new joint venture isn’t fully baked yet, but NTT DoCoMo said it will invest 450 million Japanese yen ($5.8 million USD) to establish a wholly owned subsidiary, called Communication Platform Planning Co., Ltd. headed by CEO Mitsunobu Komori. Komori is the EVP and CTO of DOCOMO. As the head of a chip platform and with the experience from being at mobile operator responsible for delivering some of the world’s most advanced handsets, he knows what consumers want, and clearly this joint venture is hoping it will deliver it.

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At the mHealth Summit in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Qualcomm announced the creation of a new division called Qualcomm Life — replacing its Wireless Health business – overseeing its new 2net mobile and cloud telemedicine platform. The heart of the system is the 2net Hub, a wireless gateway that can link to any wireless sensor or device through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy and ANT+, encrypt that data and send it securely to the 2net cloud.

Qualcomm's 2net Hub

The hub isn’t the only way to transmit that medical data, though. Medical devices with their own cellular radios can upload biometrics directly to the 2net cloud as can smartphones loaded with health monitoring apps. Qualcomm has designed APIs that hospitals, doctors and insurance companies can use to integrate 2net into their healthcare systems, allowing them to retrieve patient information as well as upload any medical data they have compiled. Qualcomm also announced that it is starting a $100 million fund, managed by Qualcomm’s venture capital arm, that will seek out and invest in other mobile health startups.

Verizon is also developing its own cloud-based platform to connect medical devices to a common diagnostic database working with Entra Health Systems. But Verizon’s big contribution to mobile health may lie in its ability to transmit massive amounts of information between doctors and their patients over a far-flung network. New tablet video chat and conferencing abilities paired with diagnostic sensors could be used to approximate the office check up, used for follow-ups after a procedure or a new prescriptions and even as a means of instant communications during minor emergencies.

While it’s easy to think of telemedicine being primarily a solution for the old and the infirm, it has the potential to target a much wider swath of the public. New wirelessly connected pill caps can remind patients to take their medication and even notify a doctor if a patient goes to long without popping a prescribed pill. New exercise and diet monitoring devices can deliver real-time information useful for preventative medicine and monitoring overall fitness (your doctor will know if you’ve been lying about that daily 3-mile jog). Plus, new wireless technologies could expand healthcare to areas where hospitals and clinics are few and far between. Verizon plans to expand its LTE network to rural areas through spectrum-leasing partnerships with small regional operators. A 4G connection might be just what the doctor ordered when it comes to delivering remote healthcare to traditionally underserved areas.

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There are the usual suspects: Samsung, ARM Holdings, Qualcomm and Broadcom. But there are some lesser-known names like Largan Precision and Genius Electronic Optical that could be camera lens providers for the new phone. On the software and Internet side of things, Nuance is a likely winner, and so are Wolfram Alpha and Yelp, two key data providers for Siri, a showcase technology in the new device.

Any more thoughts on winners? Let us know.

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As the former CEO of Atheros, a Wi-Fi chip company Qualcomm purchased this year, Barratt is a big believer in Wi-Fi. It’s not only a convenient means to offload cellular data traffic and helping consumers avoid depleting their precious mobile megabytes, but it’s also increasingly important inside home networks for delivering media such as music and movies to more devices like smartphones, tablets, Roku boxes and even alarm clocks.

But streaming HD movies requires more bandwidth than some networks can handle, and as picture quality improves bandwidth requirements will escalate. At that point home networks already carrying Skype calls, web traffic and multiple movie streams may grind to a halt. Enter Wi-Fi 802.11ac, which will only operate in the 5 GHz spectrum and can deliver gigabit speeds. It will also ship with Wi-Fi Direct peer-to-peer technology and be backwards compatible with existing Wi-Fi devices.

As I point out in the video below, the main thing that mars the excitement of this advance is that my home network doesn’t deliver gigabit or even 100 Mbps speeds, which means I won’t actually need a new 802.11ac router anytime soon.

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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 is obviously because of the rise of Internet and touch-centric operating environments such as Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. The latest OS to fall victim to this shift is Qualcomm’s Brew OS. In a chat, Qualcomm President of Internet Services Rob Chandhok said:

[It's] not really the thing that’s in the spotlight for us anymore….we shouldn’t be too surprised: it’s been around for 10 years, there aren’t too many operating systems that have been around with only a couple of revisions in 10 years in the market….the pace might be a little bit slower than it was before, just because the market has changed.

It seems the company is going to continue pushing Brew OS, but only for low-end devices, Chandhok said. With more capable $30 Android phones popping up all over the world, I’m not sure there’s room for the Brew OS; it was formed in the non-Internet era and doesn’t have a chance in these times of “anywhere computing,” even at the low end of the spectrum.The San Diego-based Qualcomm has been spending liberally on the Android ecosystem and has dedicated a lot of resources to Google’s mobile platform. Reading between the lines, the Brew has lost its fizz!

For more in-depth analysis, we will be discussing mobile operating systems and the impact of mobile Internet on handsets and mobile services at our Mobilize 2011: The Mobile Internet Conference scheduled to be held in San Francisco on Sept. 26 and 27, 2011. Hope you will join me.

That question won’t be answered today, but Intel is in the very least trying to avoid being a mobile loser as Qualcomm and other vendors using the ARM architecture make strides inside tablets and smartphones. Intel’s fighting to control the consumer computing market as consumers want low-power portable devices, while also trying to continue its expansion on the server side, where it has seen tremendous growth.

The Haswell products, which unfortunately won’t be out until 2013, will have 10 days of standby battery life, which puts Intel into the same league as ARM’s designs. However, it’s unclear where vendors such as Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple and other ARM licensees might be in terms of performance and power consumption at that time. And while software platforms are now tuned to Intel and ARM-based chips, Intel lost out on a huge advantage by being slow to cut power consumption. A year ago, before Microsoft committed to support ARM-based chips, Intel had a significant advantage.

Intel is also going to have to fight to get its way into handsets, which can take a long time. For example, Nvidia launched its first application processor in 2008 and only scored some major wins in devices in 2011. Handset makers aren’t eager to pick up new-fangled chips in their devices, so it can take a while. However, in the tablet market, Intel could pick up traction, as enterprise customers are already in favor of using Intel on the devices judging from Cisco’s efforts with the Cius tablet.

Haswell, which Intel showed off running on a solar panel, also may have a spot in the micro server market, according to Andrew Feldman, CEO of SeaMicro. SeaMicro makes a rack of servers that use Atom chips today, but could end up using high-end Atom chips or low-end Haswell chips. By covering both ends of the low-power market, Intel is signaling it’s serious about low power, both for the client side and on the server side.

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Wintel partners adapt to a smartphone and tablet world

It’s interesting to see the fraying relationship between Intel and Microsoft, which has been tested after Microsoft announced support for ARM chips. Intel’s embrace of Android could be seen as the reaction of a spurned partner. But in the larger picture, the announcements underscore how both are forced to work hard to navigate a new post-PC era in which neither of them are guaranteed success. And since the cozy Wintel relationship doesn’t carry the same clout it did when PCs were king, both are having to scramble and figure how to best position themselves in a world where smartphones and tablets dominate.

The fact is that mobile devices, wireless broadband and the cloud are changing what we expect computers to do. And the old paradigm of powerful laptops and desktops leading the way increasingly doesn’t make as much sense with consumers, who are embracing these new computing models. Indeed, in the fourth quarter of last year, smartphone shipments hit 100 million units, outpacing PC shipments for the first time. And iPad sales are booming while a credible rival has yet to emerge.

Microsoft embraces ARM, Intel partners with Android

At its Build conference on Tuesday, Microsoft showed its hand with the Windows 8 operating system that builds off its Metro-style, tile-based interface, which began on Windows Phone 7 and is now moving across Microsoft’s products such as the Xbox. The interface works just as well for fingers as mouses and showcases Metro-style apps at the heart of the experience. The new operating system will work off ARM-based chips from Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments as well as existing x86 processors from Intel and AMD. Microsoft is promising ultrathin PCs and tablets that will run Windows 8, turn on instantly and run all day on a single charge. Windows 8 will appear in about a year’s time.

Meanwhile, Intel used its Intel Developer Forum to announce a new partnership with Google to optimize its Intel Atom architecture for Android mobile devices, from the OS kernel to multimedia and graphics. The two will work together to speed the time to market for Intel-based Android devices. Google Senior VP Andy Rubin appeared alongside Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who showed off prototypes of an Android tablet and phone. Intel had previously promised dozens of Android tablets built with Intel processors and had hoped to have a smartphone available through Nokia this year, a plan that was quashed when Nokia partnered with Windows Phone 7. The chipmaker said to expect Intel-based devices by early 2012.

Succeeding outside the Wintel partnership

Intel has partnered with Google before, on Google TV, so it’s not completely surprising that it will be extending its relationship around Android. Otellini is also on Google’s board. But the partnership is a good sign for the world’s largest chipmaker, which has struggled to compete in the market for smartphones and tablets. The company has said that its chips are getting a lot more efficient and will be more popular as these post-PC devices demand more performance. Getting Google on its side could help its chips shine on Android, which is an opportunity Intel desperately needs to make good on as PC sales slow.

Microsoft’s support of ARM is not new, and that support is understandable, because the Windows maker needs a presence on post-PC devices. Right now, Windows Phone 7 is having minimal effect on the smartphone market. But the announcement on Tuesday again underscored how it will need power-sipping chips to compete in the market against the iPad. It’s touting all-day battery life for laptops and tablets, and that’s more likely to come from ARM chips, which are still more power-efficient than Intel’s and are the dominant architecture for mobile devices.

A lot to prove

Both companies are facing struggles ahead as they navigate this new terrain. Microsoft needs to show that one operating system can serve both tablets and PCs and not alienate either audience. It also needs to win over developers and show them how their apps will shine on Windows 8. Intel has to prove that it can actually deliver both power and efficiency in its mobile chips. Android devices already suffer from bad battery life in most comparisons to iOS devices, so Intel has its work cut out for it.

But if Intel can get its mobile act together and Microsoft can nail its execution with Windows 8, who knows? Maybe these two will forge a tight relationship down the line. But right now, they both have to prove to the world and each other that they are each well prepared to compete in this new era.

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Rob Chandhok, SVP, Qualcomm

When it comes to mobile browsers, WebKit has fast become the de facto technology for most big smartphone platforms. From red-hot Android to astonishing iOS to beleaguered Symbian and Blackberry, they have all turned to WebKit for their mobile browsing needs. You wouldn’t be remiss in assuming that Apple and Google are WebKit’s biggest champions — because they are. These days, WebKit has a new best friend, San Diego-based chip maker Qualcomm.

In a conversation earlier this week, Rob Chandhok, SVP of software strategy for the San Diego-based chip company, said that now his crew is one of the largest “committers” to the open-source browser project, and they’re putting resources into Google’s V8 JavaScript engine, as well. The support of WebKit is part of the company’s strategic decision of embracing open web technologies and championing the open-source software, he said.

Qualcomm isn’t doing this through the goodness of its heart; the company realizes it needs to help nurture HTML5. Qualcomm, Chandhok pointed out, wants to make it easy to access system-level components such as the graphics processor (GPU), GPS, compass and camera in the browser for web-based apps. Chandhok hopes the company can allow HTML5 apps to come into their own, and much like the wired web, turn the browser into the center of mobile internet experience versus the so-called native apps. “HTML5 and the browser will win over time. Maybe not this year, but it will happen,” he said.

As Rob pointed out, HTML5 apps help app developers easily overcome the fragmentation challenges of Android and issues that come up with developing for multiple mobile platforms. “We had fragmentation problems in the early days of Brew (a Qualcomm-owned OS) because we didn’t have no leverage in the early days,” Chandhok said.

When I asked him about the possibilities with HTML5 apps, he pointed out that “the Amazon cloud reader is a good starting point.” WebKit isn’t the only software initiative for the chip giant, however. “In order for us to be a platform, we need to have software along with our silicon,” Chandhok said. The company today has more than 5,000 employees devoted to its software efforts and is said to be one of the most active contributors to the Android ecosystem. If Qualcomm is reticent to share any details, it’s because the company also sells silicon to people who make non-Android devices.

Chandhok isn’t too shy to admit that the more folks use the mobile internet and the higher their expectations for HTML5 apps, the more likely they are to buy smartphones with better processors, bigger screens and higher-speed capabilities. And all that means more demand for their chips.

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Take for instance this demo app I saw that allowed you to focus the camera of your smartphone on a sealed DVD and instantly watch a trailer of the movie inside the without opening the packaging. You can watch two trailers at the same time as well.

The app takes a look at the DVD cover image, maps it to the online database and streams back the trailer in real-time. However, in order to make it happen, the phone needs a powerful dual-core Snapdragon chip, a fast 3G/WiFi connection and powerful graphics processor. It is easy to dismiss this as a gimmick, but using augmented reality to preview goods sealed inside boxes or getting additional information is a stellar idea.

“GPS, camera and compass in tandem can do some pretty amazing things,” Wright argued. I agree.

So far Augmented Reality has stayed in the realm of travel or location apps, but in reality it is simpler, easy to use scenarios such as the one I outlined above that is the best step forward. It is highly focused and adds value to an inanimate product in a simple, easy manner. Or as Wright said, “Augmented Reality is more than a mapping experience.”

From our archives: Mobile Augmented Reality: Apps That Will Change the Way We See the World

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HTC purchased S3 Graphics from VIA in a deal valued at $300 million. VIA still has the rights to use the technology and IP associated with S3 in its chips. VIA is a maker of low-power, x86-based chips that are used in set-top boxes, mobile devices and laptops. It had acquired S3 Graphics in 2001 to integrate graphics capabilities with its processor and chipset products. That was ahead of AMD buying graphics chipmaker ATI in 2006 and Qualcomm buying the mobile graphics division of AMD in 2009. It was also before graphics maker Nvidia got serious about bringing GPUs to mobile devices that resulted in its first mobile chip in 2008.

The graphics edge

A decade after the deal, it’s clear graphics capability is a leading differentiator among device makers as consumers watch more movies, surf more picture-laden websites and generally view the web not only as a medium for reading, but for sharing photos, viewing maps, skimming infographics and any number of visually intense activities.

The deal, announced as HTC comes of a hot quarter where revenue grew by 104 percent from the previous year and net income doubled to $607.26 million, could also be a result of Apple’s influence on the handset market. Apple has developed its own silicon for its phones and tablets, and Samsung has been working on a similar tactic. Perhaps HTC realized vertical integration might be the way to go in mobile development and wanted to lock down some graphics capabilities for a reasonable cost.

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Bluetooth inside? You betcha!

Apple is joining the board of the Bluetooth standards organization as the group focuses the latest iteration of Bluetooth on the burgeoning market for fitness and health sensor data from mobile devices. The Bluetooth SIG said Tuesday that Apple and Nordic Semiconductor were joining the organization, and also announced its goals of moving into the mobile sensor market with its latest version of the Bluetooth standard.

Bluetooth, which gained ubiquity in the form of headsets, is a wireless data transfer protocol that delivers chunks of data in close proximity, making it good for voice and even as a runaround to official mobile broadband tethering. But it has long sucked batteries like I gulp my coffee on a Monday morning, which made it less-than-ideal for sensors. This became more of an issue as companies experimented with devices like connected pedometers and other sensors that attach to a person’s clothing or accessories to monitor things like heart rate or temperature.

As smartphones and connected devices proliferated, the idea of real-time health and fitness tracking from a smartphone became cheaper, easier and more available to the casual consumer, which has spawned a few personal area networking technologies that want to become for bioinformatics what Bluetooth became for headsets. But Bluetooth wants to be the Bluetooth of bioinformatics too, and hopes its new low energy standard and recently added profiles to support medical sensors are the key to the sensor market. With Apple on the board, it may have a better chance.

I covered the rise of bioinformatics and the standards vying to become the protocol of choice for the market in a GigaOM Pro report in January (subscription required), and in an interview with the Bluetooth SIG’s Executive Director Mike Foley, learned about Bluetooth,s bioinformatics goals. At the time, Apple used a proprietary version of the Bluetooth standard for delivering sensor data from the pedometers in Nike shoes, which used less power than the previous version of Bluetooth (as opposed to the new Low Energy standard). Perhaps its move to become a board member means we’ll see a more ubiquitous standard for sensor data make its way into Apple’s popular iPhone and iPod touch products, and thus to the rest of the consumer device markets.

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Lowering the power consumption of chips has become a rallying call for the chip industry. SuVolta is also doing its bit so that battery-powered mobile devices will last longer and server makers can deliver computing without requiring data centers to have their own power plants — a theoretical future that could grind the current wave of web services and cloud computing innovations to a halt. The startup has the backing of several A-listers in the chip world, such as Andy Bechtolsheim, Wilfred Corrigan (the founder of LSI Logic) and Bill Joy (Sun Microsystems co-founder, now with Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers).

SuVolta was founded in  2006, and it raised $36.5 million in three rounds through 2009 from investors, including angels such as Bechtolsheim and Corrigan and venture firms including Kleiner Perkins and others. But it ran into stormy weather  — a situation not uncommon in the chip industry. So it was recapitalized in 2010 with $22 million from NEA, August Capital and Kleiner Perkins after getting new management.

The new executive team is headed by McWilliams, who has worked at Tessera and Flextronics, and Scott Thompson as the CTO. Thompson was an Intel fellow who worked on many types of process technologies, both to lower the power consumption in chips but also to continue shrinking them and cramming more transistors on them. We recently covered Intel’s new type of 3-D transistor it announced with much fanfare in May.

SuVolta’s tech, however, is less revolutionary than changing the design of the transistor. At an early point in the manufacturing process (it won’t disclose the point), the SuVolta technology calls for a slightly different combination of ingredients to be layered on the chip. Semiconductors are manufactured in a manner similar to layer cakes, with each layer of circuitry deposited on the chip and the unnecessary bits etched away according to whatever pattern the manufacturer is supposed to follow. Thompson says that SuVolta’s process, which will be available next year, doesn’t change the overall chip-making process. It doesn’t change the silicon used to make the chip, and it can be easily implemented in fabrication plants that will license SuVolta’s technology.

That’s not all. The company says that in addition to the modifications to the manufacturing process, it has developed new circuit design elements that will boost the efficiency even more. McWilliams plans on selling licenses much like ARM does to chip makers, although this tweak doesn’t change the instruction set (so an x86-based chip from Intel or AMD will still operate as an x86 chip, while a chip based on the ARM architecture is still able to run software for those chips).

Unlike building a new chip and finding buyers for it, SuVolta has to convince chip foundries such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company; chip makers such as Qualcomm and Broadcom; and even chip equipment makers such as Applied Materials to embrace its new technology. Fujitsu Semiconductor has signed on as the first licensee. Let’s hope there will be others — for the sake of our power-hungry smartphones.

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For example, Skype today said it was releasing a new open standard interface for encoding cameras, known as Skype UVC 1.4. available for chip vendors and video camera makers so they can make video cameras work with Skype at the hardware layer. Texas Instruments, Logitech and Maxim are already using the standard. On the mobile application processor side, Qualcomm said it was going to power Adobe Flash on its Snapdragon chipsets; a followup to an announcement it made in February regarding integrating the Netflix DRM and codec on its processors. Other mobile application processor makers are also in discussions with vendors including Skype and Netflix according to my sources within the industry.

For those who spent their lives covering chips, these announcements are significant. Designing and producing chips is a long process (about 12-18 months), and of course, the devices that use them can take a few months to arrive on retail shelves before then residing inside a consumer’s pocket for another 18 months or so. Basically this means when a type of software support is built directly into silicon, it’s something that chipmakers and device makers think will be around for a while. So apparently, Skype, Netflix and Flash are making the grade — at least with some vendors.

And because integrating this sort of capability into the hardware helps cut down on processing cycles and battery drain, it also means that the folks building the stuff inside your phones and tablets think people are going to want to use these apps, and use them often. Also, in some cases it helps bypass software fragmentation issues that can make an application work less smoothly on devices that may run a plethora of different versions of an operating system. Android, I’m looking at you!

While the cost of mobile broadband or slower 3G speeds may limit the appeal of using video on our handsets, Wi-Fi, larger screens on devices like tablets, and the coming 4G networks will make video a necessity in a few short years. And that’s what these vendors are banking on as they bake this capability into the circuits of the chips themselves.

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In order to deliver the type of user experiences enabled by these innovations software must keep pace – otherwise we will fall painfully short of capitalizing on the opportunities presented by these hardware achievements. This goes beyond the need for innovations in OSes and applications, to the underlying software that ties everything together. It’s the next great challenge faced by the mobile industry.

Software as the Connective Tissue of the Phone

When it comes to mobile software, the importance of operating systems and applications is well understood. The battle for smartphone OS market share evokes a feverish MLB pennant race, and the fact that we’re all hopelessly addicted to Angry Birds proves that mobile apps have thoroughly permeated the mainstream.

Less understood, however, is the importance of the underlying software layer; the connective tissue that ties hardware to software, such as optimizations between OS and chipset, performance advancements in web technology, and enhanced app performance. Without these efforts, gigahertz, cores and megabytes of RAM are nothing more than points on a spec sheet. In order to deliver the best possible mobile experiences, hardware and software cannot be viewed separately. They are attached at the hip, and integrating them to work in perfect unison is the key to driving mobile innovation forward.

Immediate benefits of intelligent integration include better graphical frame rates in games, faster web page downloads and smoother rendering and scrolling. These are just a sampling of the user experience improvements that will help mobile devices keep up with ever-increasing consumer expectations.

Innovating for the Future of the Mobile Web

All too often, the primary focus is on what the consumer wants today. It is our job to anticipate what the consumer will want tomorrow and innovate accordingly.

While today’s consumers are still largely enamored with the simple inclusion of mobile browsers, tomorrow’s expectations will include desktop-level browser performance, Web pages and apps running on par with native apps and smooth HD multimedia streaming like the desktop equivalent. This is possible via complex but informed optimizations to the HTTP networking layer, HTML5 browser core, and JavaScript engine. While powerful processors will strongly influence robust Web experiences, the mobile software layer is significantly impacting how we get the most out of mobile hardware and continue to innovate on behalf of the consumer experience.

While HTML5 will play an important role in the evolution of the mobile Web, it won’t come to fruition until mobile devices support the specification fully, from web and enterprise apps to entertainment and browsing. Forward-thinking developers making the transition to HTML5-based web apps stand to reap the benefits. The HTML5 family of standards runs faster, more efficiently and with greater capabilities when the hardware and software have been tightly integrated.

The biggest remaining hurdle is ensuring that the same array of device capabilities, such as camera access, is available to Web apps as their native counterparts. To this end, companies like Qualcomm are enabling a rich set of device APIs within the browser so that Web apps have that same detailed control and usage of the device’s hardware.

Collaboration Is Key

The mobile industry is built on partnerships within the diverse lines of business that make up the ecosystem and we must continue to work closely together to make these advancements a reality — from ensuring common device APIs are defined, implemented, and utilized to working hand in hand across the mobile ecosystem to deliver web experiences that go beyond what we ever experienced on a PC. All stand to benefit greatly by software’s ongoing impact on mobile, and efficient collaboration will expedite that process. Ultimately, intelligent and tight OS integration within the chip provides time to market advantages for OEMs who will see their devices running faster, smoother and more efficiently.

Enhancing mobile software is not a trickle down process. It starts with the seamless hardware integration and ends with developers bringing the experience to life. If we are serious about a future where mobile phones are responsible for tasks currently held by computers we need to embrace the role of software in overall mobile performance and continue strongly supporting the software developers that are driving innovation.

Rob Chandhok is president of Qualcomm Internet Services and helps drive software strategy for Qualcomm’s client and server platforms. He and other mobile industry thought leaders will be discussing these topics and more June 1-2 at Uplinq 2011 in San Diego. His Twitter handle is @robchandhok

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Icera is a nine-year-old semiconductor company that makes a baseband chip with the ability to listen to many different frequencies and technological standards in one small package. That means it can work on 2G, 3G and 4G networks that use different protocols — such as HSPA, HSPA+ and LTE — all on the same chip. The Icera chip is also programmable, making it far more flexible than one hardwired for a variety of protocols. Integrating radio technologies in future Nvidia SOC (system on a chip) hardware could lead to lower power consumption for mobile devices.

Nvidia isn’t just banking on wireless computing, it’s banking on the kind of fast device design cycles that vendors such as Apple, with its typical annual refresh, have ushered into the market. With a programmable radio, Nvidia can change-up the radio for customer’s demands at a much faster rate. Nvidia also plans to keep Icera’s other customers happy by integrating Icera’s processor with whatever other application processor of the customer’s choosing. This puts Nvidia in the baseband business and if Nvidia wants to pursue it, could result in Icera gaining some real market traction, given its relatively small balance sheet has limited the company to this point.

The deal is an echo of Intel’s decision to buy Infineon’s wireless business for $1.4 billion last year, as well as a vote for the Qualcomm way of doing things, which basically offers device makers an integrated application processor with a radio on the same chip. Other leaders in the application processor market, such as Samsung, also have their own radios, with Samsung investing in developing its own LTE chips a few years ago. Other vendors in the radio world have beefed up their application processor efforts, with firms such as Broadcom and Marvell both pushing hard on the “brains” aspect of their chip businesses. This leaves me wondering where a vendor such as Texas Instruments fits in, given that TI got out of the wireless baseband business to focus on application processors.

Regardless of where individual chip firms shake out here, the deal is a clear indication that connectivity (and cellular connectivity at that) has become a must-have feature in computing today. Nvidia’s confidence in its ability to break into this market also shows how vastly different the mobile ecosystem could be, when compared to the staid Wintel architecture that dominated the PC era.

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