Qualcomm get aggressive on Wi-Fi

There are several articles out today talk about Qualcomm’s new 802.11n chipsets. It appears there is one chip for the home router/gateway market, and a second targeting the embedded handset market. Glenn Fleishman comments that the products are timed right to support multiple HD TV streams in the home.

It’s good to see Qualcomm getting aggressive with Wi-Fi.

Qualcomm Positions Wi-Fi and Femtocells

I recently uncovered a very interesting whitepaper on the Qualcomm site. Published in December, 2007 and titled “Femtocells and WLAN Complement 3G and Beyond”, the whitepaper approached the current Wi-Fi/Femto furor with an outlook similar to my own: the imperative is for in-building radios to provide service zones, and is less about which radio technology is used.

By using Wi-Fi or femtocells, operators have the ability to develop a ‘service zone’ where new, differentiated services can be delivered to subscribers.

The paper goes on to outline four reasons why an operator needs to use a technology like Wi-Fi and/or femtocell to complement a 3G deployment:

• Indoor coverage – which can mean regular ‘coverage’, but now implies improving the data rate/throughput for packet services
• Capacity gains – good old macro radio offload
• Cost savings – specifically attributed to the use of broadband/IP for backhaul
• New Services – specifically Home Zone services, or applications specific to a location.

These are all things that are common to the “Home Zone 2.0” strategy.

My only disagreement in the piece is the discussion about VCC. But this was written before the announcement that Qualcomm was adding UMA support to their dual-mode 3G platform.

3G 'dual-mode' phones are on the way

As the dual-mode handset (DMH) market continues its explosive growth, the focus for devices in 2008 has started to shift. With nearly 20 UMA-based dual mode 2G phones, there’s now solid demand for UMA-based 3G devices.

One of the most exciting announcements at the Mobile World Congress this year was platform support for UMA-enabled 3G/2G/Wi-Fi handsets. I guess we can’t call them ‘dual-mode’, perhaps we’re going to have to move to ‘multi-mode’ devices.

There were two 3G platform announcements:

First, NXP, a long-time supporter of UMA-enabled platforms announced support for a 3G/UMTS version of their Nexperia product line. NXP is supplier to UMA-device powerhouse Samsung, so look for 3G handsets from them in the future.

Second was an announcement that Qualcomm and Kineto have developed a UMA-enabled version of their 72xx series platform. Qualcomm’s market position makes this a very strategic announcement, opening up the potential for UMA-enabled devices from many different handset manufacturers.

This is a 'rolls down hill' type of business. Operators decide what they need. They put pressure on their handset suppliers. The handset suppliers turn to their platform suppliers to get platforms to meet those requirements. The platform suppliers work with the component providers to develop sub-systems to meet the need.

It's clear that demand from the top continues to be strong for UMA-enabled handsets.