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| Qualcomm's mantra: Always-on wireless access at low cost |
| Shyamal Majumdar / Mumbai May 21, 2009, 00:03 IST |
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Kanwalinder Singh, president, India and South Asia, of the world’s largest CDMA (Code division multiple access) chipset maker, Qualcomm, has reasons to feel happy. Despite late entry into Indian market, CDMA 2000 has over 92 million subscribers and enjoys a quarter of the market share. In recent months, CDMA 2000 has averaged subscriber net additions of over 2.7 million per month.
But Singh says the time has come to go beyond voice. “Indian mobile companies have been obsessed with the voice subscription game. It’s time to look at value-added services that can significantly transform society,” Singh says, adding 3G wireless broadband is an opportunity coming their way to make high-speed wireless internet access more widely available and affordable. According to the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), for every one per cent increase, internet connectivity has twice the impact of voice on GDP growth.
Singh says globally 2G (GSM) is rapidly transitioning to 3G and Qualcomm will drive a similar trend in India and bring in “affordable tiered solution” to stimulate mass market adoptions. Reasons: 3G feature phones will bring better voice clarity and multimedia experience to users, opening new services revenue streams for wireless operators; 3G USB modems, dongles and data cards will bring ‘always on’ wireless broadband connectivity to laptops and desktops that are already experiencing accelerated growth; and affordable 3G smart phones will bring in a new dimension to enterprise connectivity.
Affordability is the key word here. Singh says computing devices are getting smaller (last year, 2 million laptops were sold in India compared to 3 million smart phones) and the San Diego-based company is ready with technologies that can change people’s lives, particularly in emerging markets like India. For example, Qualcomm-powered wireless internet devices can remove the need to carry a mobile phone, if the computing device is small enough.
For example, the Kayak platform developed by the company Kayak, is essentially a portable computing device that leverages 3G chipsets and can also be connected to the internet even in small villages where connectivity is difficult to access or is unaffordable. Kayak fills the niche that exists between desktop PCs, which normally require landlines or separate accessories for connectivity, and internet-capable wireless devices.
Qualcomm will not make the Kayak PCs, but will offer the software specifications and reference design to device manufacturers. Devices based on the Kayak design will offer a full-featured Web 2.0-capable browser to perform at desktop resolutions; access via the browser to Web 2.0 productivity applications; support for both television sets and computer monitors to be used as displays and/or for a built-in display; compatibility with a standard keyboard and mouse for input; and music player and/or a 3D gaming console functionality.
While a laptop usually measures 15 inches or more, that on Qualcomm's snapdragon platform would be mostly in the range of nine to 12 inches. There will be pocket devices also.
One of the major advantages will be that these devices will be low-powered. The small computing devices when embedded with a snapdragon chipset platform can make them run even on mobile phone batteries. In a country like India where power supply in villages has been a problem, this can be a game-changer, says Singh.
A proud Singh says the Kayak platform was developed by over 1,000 engineers based in the company’s Research & Development (R &D) centres in Bangalore and Hyderabad. Web-based applications open up new possibilities for people in emerging markets for whom packaged software can be expensive, says Singh, adding that the prices of 3G entry-level handsets will come down sharply.
Of course, Qualcomm isn’t alone in looking at launching such low-cost internet-based devices in India. Intel, the world’s largest chip-maker, is also introducing net-enabled devices based on atom processors, starting from as low as Rs 5,000. But Qualcomm, which was established in July 1985, has an advantage because of its technology-richness. The company, which invests over a fifth of its global revenues in R&D efforts, holds 8,900 US patents and pending patent applications for CDMA and related technologies.
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