Jacobs: ‘Merging’ chipsets to push technologies

SAN DIEGO-Qualcomm Inc. CEO Paul Jacobs gave a keynote speech to a room of friends here at the 2007 3G CDMA North America Regional Conference last week.
“It’s good to be among friends,” he said. “I’ve been dealing with a few people who aren’t my friends, so it’s good to be welcome.”
CDMA technology is in as great of a position it’s ever been in, he said, adding that more than 377 million subscribers are currently using the technology. And despite his general characterization of the technology as a leader in the push to mobile broadband, he argued that the industry eventually will see a merging of multiple networks and their respective technologies into one chipset that will deliver seamless services best suited for each technology available.
“I think the next step is really a merging,” he said. “Moving forward we’ll have the chipsets to make it cost effective” to include multiple technologies with CDMA. “Then I think we’ll get to this mode where we don’t have to have this religious war.”
That world clearly isn’t a reality just yet and Jacobs quickly returned to his part, boasting the benefits of the CDMA flavor. “This is the best technology to bridge the digital divide” in developing countries, he said, adding that CDMA has helped the industry break below the $25 handset mark.
It’s the price point of CDMA that best enables affordable mobile broadband, Jacobs said. And the cost-effectiveness mostly comes down to Qualcomm’s goal to implement a single chipset solution that includes all available technologies.
Qualcomm is looking at all available technologies and networks. “We can get each radio as good as it can possibly be,” he said. “We continue to improve the existing technologies.”
Push to talk, video telephony, multimedia upload and exchange, low latency gaming, voice over Internet Protocol, high speed Web browsing, large e-mail attachments, multicasting, tiered services and video and music streaming or downloads will all be at play in this merging field, Jacobs said.
“As we go forward I think we’re going to see all these technologies come together,” he said. While many are excited about the technologies to come, Qualcomm included, Jacobs and his team believes there is still endless opportunity inherent in technologies already in the market.
“As time goes on, as we drive the cost down, voice over IP is going to be the main method by which voice communications are done. I think in the end this is pretty much a no-brainer technology to deploy,” Jacobs said.
“What we need to do is just continue to roll out the applications.”