Qualcomm's Kayak: a Net surfboard for the developing world

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 13 November 2008 23:39

Business IT - Technology

A Kayak device will be a 'box' into which you'll be able to plug either a TV or computer monitor as a display device and a standard keyboard and mouse for input.

It will use Qualcomm's dual-core Mobile Station Modem MSM7xxx-series chipsets to provide both computing and connectivity. There will also be a music player and/or 3D gaming capability.

Qualcomm is planning to have demonstration units for trial in the first quarter of 2009 manufactured by Inventec Corporation of Taiwan. These will operate on both CDMA2000 (1x-EVDO) networks and WCDMA (HSPA) networks.

However Qualcomm's main plan is to market Kayak as a reference design and set of recommended software specifications that will be made available to device manufacturers who will then be able to "that take advantage of the high level of integration, inherent connectivity and comprehensive functionality."

Further down the track it expects that Kayak will use Snapdragon, Qualcomm's planned mobile device chipset, announced in November 2006 and billed as "a significant step toward realising the company's vision of universal mobility."

Qualcomm promised that Snapdragon would "add expanded functionality to future generations of consumer electronics - from gaming/portable entertainment devices to pocket computers and beyond - by delivering ubiquitous mobile broadband access, together with unsurpassed processing performance and battery life."

Snapdragon, and quite likely Kayak, will feature in Qualcomm's first ever briefing to media and analysts in Australia, on 19 November.