Qualcomm’s ceo Paul Jacobs has said that the company has several strong European prospects for its MediaFLO technology, the rival digital mobile broadcast technology to DVB-H.
“Other things are happening in Europe where you might expect there to be a strong DVB-H market. It’s not the case Qualcomm is locked out of WCDMA markets. Qualcomm is building chip sets across both these [WCDMA, 1x] standards,” Jacobs said.
He added that the connection between WCDMA and DVB-H, “while trumpeted by the DVB-H crowd”, is not “strictly accurate”.
Qualcomm expects to make some market announcements with European WCDMA based operators to back up that confidence, he hinted.
Jacobs demonstrated FLO working over a Samsung UMTS phone, showing Verizon’s datacasting application, and the broadcast of a live baseball match.
Jacobs also said that Qualcomm was working to bring the price of a “world-mode” phone down to the mid tier. A “world-mode” phone is a phone that supports both CDMA and GSM radio access, and is aimed at CDMA users who roam a lot in GSM areas.
Although Verizon coo Lowell McAdam had told journalists earlier that such dual mode phones were easily available, Jacobs said Qualcomm’s development of the MSM6125, MSM6500 and MSM6550 chipset platforms would help bring the price of such phones down. These solutions are expected to commence sampling in the third quarter of 2006.
Jacobs also announced that this company is planning to enter the wireless LAN market by attacking the 802.11n market. Admitting the company had had no play in WiFi up to now, Jacobs said the next generation of wireless LAN would see Qualcomm enter the market.
At the moment Qualcomm is working with partners on producing two chip solutions, but clearly if the company sees a market for dual mode cellular, WiFi phones a single chip solution could be the goal.
“We have wireless WAN and now we have wireless LAN technologies,” Jacobs said.