Wireless News

Qualcomm has announced a new addition to its line of Snapdragon chipsets. The new chipset promises to improve the performance of smartphones and improve the battery life as well as enhancing both 2D and 3D graphics.

The chipset is called the Snapdragon QSD8650A and is expected to begin sampling by the end of 2009. The processor included with the chipset runs at 1.3GHz and offers 30% better performance than previous Snapdragon platforms.

In addition to offering better performance, the new Snapdragon chipset also consumes less power needing under 10 millwatts when in standby mode. Less power consumption in standby means that mobile phones running the new chipset will have better battery life. Other features of the chipset include GPS, HD video recording and playback, Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi, and support for screen resolution sup to WXGA.

Devices today are becoming increasingly complex, but for all their complexity, the ability to play Flash videos is almost always limited to smart phones. Qualcomm and Adobe though, are going to change that by making dumb phones a little more flash friendly, announcing that they will bring flash to the BREW platform. BREW is primarily used here by Verizon Wireless and Alltel, to customize their devices’ interface.

Many phones like the Glyde and Voyager have plenty of horsepower to play some basic flash videos, and both are based on BREW. It is unclear what the minimum specifications are for a device to play the videos, for example on devices like the U470 Juke it would not even be practical. It is likely though that there will be a good enough number that this will all be worth while.

Qualcomm Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM) and Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced the BREW® Mobile Platform with integrated Adobe Flash® technology and new platform features. BREW Mobile Platform, which leverages Qualcomm’s widely deployed BREW Client software, greatly expands the capabilities for developers and enables them to create rich applications and Web content in Adobe Flash for the BREW environment. -Press Release

Qualcomm wants to ensure some revenue in the U.K. as they have just acquired 40MHz of L band spectrum across the pond. The spectrum is prime for just about any technology. It is assumed though that Qualcomm will deploy its proprietary MediaFLO mobile TV service on the spectrum. This is of course if the European Union allows it.

This is because over in the U.K. the European Union is pushing for all carriers to adopt the DVB-H mobile TV standard. As we have seen in the past, what the EU says goes as far as mobile standards, so they might not allow MediaFLO to be deployed. They did say though, that they would allow the winner of the spectrum to deploy whatever they want, and that included MediaFLO.

Qualcomm has seen bad times with their mobile standards, as of yet no carrier has adopted their UMB(Ultra Mobile Broadband) standard. In order to ensure revenues for the future, Qualcomm is spreading their footprint a little. It was not said when the spectrum will be available for Qualcomm to use. We do know how much it cost though, a very reasonable $16.2 million.

Qualcomm has shown up in a list of nine possible bidders for L band spectrum in the range of 1452 and 1492 MHz. The spectrum auction is scheduled to be held near the end of the month. Qualcomm is saying they do not want or intend to become a network operator. This excerpt from a written response to the news makes that clear.

“Qualcomm does not intend to become an operator in the United Kingdom. If L-Band spectrum is acquired, any activity beyond research and development would be done in collaboration with others,”

Spectrum is not cheap. So buying a chunk of spectrum solely for ‘research and development’ does not make too much sense. This could play a part in the story, after all, they could do some research. After that is complete though, they are left with a huge holding of spectrum and nothing to do. They could either resell the spectrum, or use it themselves.

OfCom, who is essentially the FCC of the U.K., has said they will not force a specific technology to be deployed. They did specify a list of possible applications, including satellite radio and mobile TV. Though DVB-H has been approved as the standard for the U.K., it is not mandated. Qualcomm could deploy their MediaFLO mobile TV service on the spectrum if they so desired.

Qualcomm may have been pushing their own 4G cellular broadband technology, UMB, but with takers in short supply they were also doing a healthy turn of business with WiMAX silicon. Now they’ve surprised everyone (except those who realise that the potential to make money will overrule any tech loyalty) by announcing new chipset roadmaps that include Long Term Evolution (LTE), another competing 4G standard and one which has been validated by the GSM Association. This means Qualcomm will have chipsets that support UMTS, HSPA and EV-DO and a variety of combinations of the three.

“Qualcomm is in a very unique position with LTE, being one of the very few companies that will be able to offer multi-mode solutions that deliver an upgrade path for operators looking to complement their existing 3G networks with LTE” Steve Mollenkopf, senior vice president of product management, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies

The MDM9xxx-series LTE device chipsets will include:

• MDM9200 chipset designed to support UMTS, HSPA+ and LTE
• MDM9800 chipset designed to support EV-DO Rev. B, UMB and LTE
• MDM9600 chipset designed to support UMTS, HSPA+, EV-DO Rev. B, UMB and LTE

All will offer full backward compatibility, support FDD and TDD duplex modes, different carrier bandwidths and will be capable of supporting peak data rates of up to 50 Mbps on the downlink and 25 Mbps on the uplink.