California-based Qualcomm Inc, the world's largest provider of code division multiple access (CDMA) technology, has acquired Spike Technologies Inc for $19 million. | |
| Spike Technologies, a leading semi-conductor design services company, has its design centre in Bangalore with strength of 130 employees and is headquartered in Milpitas, California. |
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| Addressing a press conference, Sanjay K Jha, president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, said: "The addition of Spike's engineering resources complements Qualcomm's commitment to provide third generation (3G) CDMA customers and partners with designs, sales and technical support." |
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| "Spike Technologies will be integrated into Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT) and help address the increasing demand for faster time to market of more feature rich products in 90 nanometer and below process technologies," he said. |
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| The key areas of Spike's service expertise are in physical design for deep submicron process technologies, circuit development, and designs and verification engineering for pre-silicon design debug and analysis. |
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| The company on Friday opened a research and development centre in Hyderabad. The R&D centre will support Qualcomm's CDMA chipset development activities and ongoing efforts to advance CDMA wireless technology in India and across the region. |
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| "As part of QCT work at Hyderabad centre includes software development, DSP firmware and hardware development, design, testing and technical support," Jha said. |
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| "The centre would also provide local operator support and customisation of CDMA modem software and chipsets for specific handset manufactures and operators," he added. |
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| According to him, the centre will enhance the chipset and software division's worldwide engineering workforce and help meet the demand for global 3G wireless services, while providing R&D support to the market. |
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| The company also proposes to increase the headcount from the existing 40 to 100 by the end of September 2005. |
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| "Through the rapid growth of wireless subscribers and increasing level of consumer sophistication, the Indian market has emerged as a real force among world-wide wireless markets and is poised for explosive growth in wireless adoption," he said. |
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| He also said that the company was bullish on the new 2.4 mbps broadband technology 1xEV-DO. "Tata and Reliance have made announcements that they would be launching this technology in December and we expect this to do well as it would allow faster transfer of data," Jha said. |
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| The technology enhancements support advanced multimedia services, low latency applications, and enable higher maximum data speeds. |
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