'We need to create a new wireless Internet,' CEO says
By Jonathan Sidener
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 30, 2008
Qualcomm says the long-awaited era of mobile data use is at hand and the number of subscribers to wireless high-speed networks will more than double over the next four years.
That's good news for the San Diego wireless technology company, which last year became the world's largest supplier of cell phone chips, thanks largely to the data transmission capabilities of its technology.
Qualcomm's Paul Jacobs addressed BREW Conference.
Qualcomm Chief Executive Paul Jacobs envisions a world where people pay for purchases with their phones instead of credit cards. The era of buying and playing more mobile games is arriving, he told a crowd of developers and cell phone company executives at the company's BREW Conference yesterday. Increasingly, people are incorporating the cell phone into workplace technology and online connections.
BREW, or binary runtime environment for wireless, is Qualcomm's system to create software programs for mobile devices. The company's eighth annual BREW Conference, with an estimated 2,500 attendees, continues today at the Manchester Grand Hyatt downtown.
BREW is best known as the underlying technology of the “Get It Now” service from Verizon Wireless, which allows users to download ringtones, music, games, applications, and use instant messaging on a phone.
Getting beyond the ringtone generation and enticing more phone owners to wade into the mobile data world will mean rethinking things, Jacobs said.
Internet companies are bringing scaled-down versions of their Web pages to mobile devices, but it would be better to have applications on the phone that would go to the Internet and bring back specific information, Jacobs said.
Advertisement“On the phone, it's no longer good enough to use a browser,” he said. “We can't just take the Web and move it to the small screen. We need to create a new wireless Internet.”
Jacobs said that more than 626 million people worldwide have phones that run on so-called 3G networks that offer voice and high-speed data connections. That number is expected to rise to 1.6 billion by 2012, he said.
Michael King, wireless analyst for market research firm Gartner, said there is no question that the growth of 3G subscribers is accelerating. And that growth is good for Qualcomm, he said.
But many 3G subscribers still use their phones primarily or solely for voice, so it remains to be seen how quickly use of the mobile Web will grow, King said. In addition, growth of the mobile Web doesn't necessarily translate to growth of BREW, he said.
“As a whole, the growth of 3G is absolutely good for Qualcomm,” King said. “It's arguable whether it means BREW is poised for growth.”
King said that BREW and other Qualcomm side projects tend to contribute indirectly to the corporate bottom line.
“They look at an area that's not growing as quickly as they would like and say, 'how can we accelerate growth?' he said.
The new products increase demand for new services often available only on new phones, King said.
“All these things eventually lead to chip sets, and that's good for Qualcomm.”
Jacobs also uses the term “enabling technology” to describe BREW and Qualcomm's mobile TV service MediaFLO. He said in an interview that both services show that use of mobile data is growing. The rise may be most visible among young cell phone subscribers, but other demographics are warming to mobile services, he said.
“My daughter sends 10,000 SMS (text) messages a month,” he said. “We have her on the unlimited plan.
“We may not have found the right applications for certain demographics, but it's not as generationally skewed as you might think. If you look at MediaFLO, we're seeing older users there,” Jacobs said.
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