To all - juicy article about QCOM stuff for high speed wireless Internet connection.
Wednesday April 14, 7:45 pm Eastern Time
Qualcomm chief sees new growth from new products
By Dick Satran
SAN FRANCISCO, April 14 (Reuters) - Mobile phone giant Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq:QCOM - news) will launch new Internet-linked mobile phones after clearing the way for wider acceptance of the technology in a pact with one of its biggest rivals, said Qualcomm founder and chief executive Dr. Irwin Jacobs.
A deal with Sweden's Ericsson ''paves the way for the worldwide acceptance'' of the technology Qualcomm has long backed that delivers high-speed voice and data, including Internet access and e-mail, to mobile telephones, he said in an interview.
Jacobs has stubbornly pushed the system in recent years while some of the biggest European phone companies pushed another. The agreement reached last month, however, spells acceptance for his technology, known as CDMA, or Code Division Multiple Access, since Ericsson will now adopt the standard for its equipment.
Just as important, Ericsson will buy from Qualcomm the infrastructure unit that develops the technology.
''We had been developing the technology but going forward it was going to get more difficult for us, as a small company, to do it,'' said Jacobs. ''Ericsson is much larger and can handle the huge amount of R&D (research and development) needed for the wireless infrastructure.''
But the agreement created a ''win-win'' situation, Jacobs said, because it's a business that Ericsson can build up which also promotes the growth of Qualcomm's main products. And Ericsson, with $20 billion in sales, is in a better position to take on the development costs than Qualcomm, with sales of just $1 billion.
Instead, Qualcomm will focus on creating the communications tools themselves, like the Qualcomm pdQ Smartphone, which combines cellular phone, a personal organizer and Internet surfing.
''Getting the Ericsson agreement was very important,'' Jacobs said.
Jacobs said there will be two new waves of products, the first being phones that get rudimentary levels of Internet service, including e-mail, followed by high-speed Internet enabled phones.
''Change will be evolutionary, and we will continue to improve the efficiency and quality of the connections, eliminating drops from the system,'' he said.
Initially, the mobile telephone service will receive signals at two megabits per second, a much higher speed than exists now on most desktops. However, signals will only be able to be sent from the telephones at 100,000 bits a second. But in the next generation, within several years, the high-speed service will run both ways.
''CDMA wireless is growing tremendously worldwide,'' Jacobs said. ''We've been pretty much of a growth company all along and we are going to work very hard to innovate and come out with new products. We certainly have the marketplace available out there to continue our growth.''
The challenge will be to launch new products at prices consumers will accept when high-speed service comes of age, he said. ''It's all going to be a learning experience -- the applications are less clear the pricing is less clear but we've got a few years to figure that out.''
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