Qualcomm promises truly pocketable computing" with Snapdragon

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 07 October 2008 02:08

Business IT - Technology

Since then iTWire has been unable to find any more recent reports about Snapdragon nor does Qualcomm appear to have announced when Snapdragon chipsets will ship in commercial quantities. However HTC has been reported as a possible user, and there is a video on YouTube of Qualcomm COO Sanjay Ja talking about Qualcomm's vision of producing a "truly pocketable computer" that will have sufficient battery power, thanks to its ultra-low power Snapdragon chipset, to operate for a whole day.

Another subject of the November 19 briefing, MediaFLO, is a complete technology platform for broadcasting multiple video (as well as audio and data) channels to handheld devices; initially, but not necessarily mobile phones.

Not only did Qualcomm develop the technology to a fully commercial system, it invested around $US800 million to build a US-wide MediaFLO network and created a subsidiary, MediaFLO USA to own and operate that network and to be the provider of services on it, setting up all the necessary relationships with content providers.

MediaFLO USA signed up the two largest cellular services providers in the US, Verizon and AT&T, to offer MediaFLO content services to their customers via new handsets (from LG and Samsung) that support the technology.

Qualcomm started out in 1985 providing contract research and development services, with limited product manufacturing, for the wireless telecommunications market. One of its first product offering was Omnitracs, a satellite tracking and navigation system for vehicle fleets and its involvement in Australia goes back to the early nineties when it tried to sell Omnitracs to Australia's domestic satellite operator, Aussat (now part of Optus). Trials were held but never progressed to a commercial service.

Then Qualcomm, through its Australian subsidiary Ozphone, bought cellular spectrum in the May 1998 auction and planned to launch a cellular service. However it abandoned those plans and in late 1999 sold the spectrum to AAPT, which still owns it.

Today, separate from the main Qualcomm business headed by Hart and located in Melbourne, there is another subsidiary, Qualcomm Australia, in Sydney, described as "a small development office, working on mobile phone authentication and security." It maintains a web page that "exists to make available software developed at Qualcomm Australia which is cryptographically interesting," but nothing seems to have been added to the page for several years.