Qualcomm to Offer TV on Cell Phones
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By Kathryn Balint, The San Diego Union-Tribune  Sep. 10--Executives at San Diego-based Qualcomm these days are sounding  more like TV moguls than makers of wireless technology as they approach the  launch of an $800 million, nationwide network to deliver television to cell  phones.
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NEW YORK - Texas Instruments is to bring live digital television broadcasts to mobile phones for the first time in a development that it claims could revolutionise the industry.
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(InfoWorld) - Qualcomm is offering mobile phone makers a choice of technologies to tune into mobile TV services. In addition to its MediaFlo broadcast system, the U.S. manufacturer unveiled the development of two new chips supporting alternative technologies at last week'sÂ 3GSM World CongressÂ in Barcelona. Qualcomm is pushing its own MediaFlo system as an alternative to the DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld) standard supported by Nokia and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, or the Japanese ISDB-T (Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting - Terrestrial) system. But in Spain, it unveiled a "universal" chip that supports all three technologies. The company has also developed a new chip that supports Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS). This technology allows mobile phone network operators to offer streamed mobile TV services more efficiently by multicasting programs instead of having to establish point-to-point links for each device as they currently do. As a result, operators will be able to position their streaming services more competitively to meet future demands of mobile TV users during peak live TV broadcasts, such as sporting events and breaking news. "A big advantage of MBMS is that the technology will help operators better utilize their networks,' said Nitesh Patel, senior analyst with Strategy Analytics Ltd. But a drawback could be the lack of commitment by handset manufacturers to make phones, he added. A key focus of Qualcomm, however, is to establish its own MediaFlo as the technology of choice for operators entering the nascent market for mobile TV services, according to Andrew Gilbert, president of Qualcomm Europe. "Nokia and others are pushing hard for DVB-H to be the mobile TV standard in Europe but MediaFlo has some significant advantages," Gilbert said in an interview. The results of its trail with British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) indicate that MediaFlo would be able to cover either twice the geographical area per transmitter or deliver double the number of channels as DVB-H, according to Gilbert. And channel switching times are faster, he said. Under Qualcomm's patent licence policy technology, proprietary MediaFlo technology can be licensed for use in CDMA (Code Division Multiplex Access) and WCDMA (Wideband-CDMA) phones with no increase in the company's standard royalty rate for these handsets. MediaFlo technology will run on any spectrum that national regulators make available to mobile TV services, according to Gilbert. If regulators initially showed more support for DVB-H, "they are more neutral today" and willing to consider alternative technologies such as MediaFlo, he said. Gilbert ruled out the DMB (Digital Media Broadcasting) standard as a viable alternative, pointing to its limited bandwidth capability. Some analysts agree. "Of the mobile TV standards out there, DMB is the weakest primarily because of its limited bandwidth, which reduces the number of channels and picture quality," Patel said. Unlike MediaFlo and DVB-H, however, the DMB standard uses spectrum currently available in numerous European markets. As such, it is enjoying a head-start advantage in countries like Germany, which issued DMB licenses prior to the World Cup soccer tournament last year. The German regulator has yet to set a time-frame for DVB-H. Momentum for MediaFlo is growing: On Feb. 12, the biggest U.S. cellular company, AT&T's Cingular division, announcedÂ plans to launch a mobile TV serviceÂ using MediaFlo technology later this year. Verizon Wireless, the country's second-largest mobile operator by subscribers, has already committed to using MediaFlo, with plans to offer commercial service in March. Â
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Wireless chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Monday said it plans to build a national high-speed network to deliver video and audio programming
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Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN.N: Quote, Profile, Research) has begun developing a chip that could bring television shows to mobile phone screens in three years.
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Qualcomm  Chief Executive Paul  Jacobs said on Thursday that talks with Nokia (NOK1V.HE) on  renewing a technology license may be helped by AT&T Inc.'s   decision to use Qualcomm's mobile television technology.
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Qualcomm Inc. on Wednesday launched a chip that will make it easier to build laptops compatible with the two dominant cellular broadband technologies in the United States.
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SAN DIEGO and TAIPEI, Taiwan, March 4  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- QUALCOMM Incorporated , a leading developer and innovator of advanced wireless technologies and data solutions, and China Network Systems (CNS), together with Taiwan Television Enterprise Ltd.
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Qualcomm Inc. on Friday raised its quarterly profit forecast due to strong demand for its mobile phone technology. The San Diego company said it expects earnings per
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Cell phone manufacturers are teaming up to bring mobile television to your handset.
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(InfoWorld) - A perfect storm is brewing in wireless communications, which may soon boom like the PC business did in the 1990s as the Web took off, a Qualcomm executive said Wednesday. Ubiquitous high-speed wireless data, mobile applications, and browsing ability will soon drive demand for 1GHz processors in handheld devices, said Sanjay Jha, executive vice president and group president of CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) technologies at Qualcomm, in San Diego. Speaking at Bank of America's annual investment conference in San Francisco, he compared today's wireless industry to the PC business when 64Kbps modems and the Netscape browser appeared in the mid-1990s. Those, too, helped drive demand for chips with 1GHz speeds and above, he said. Within a few years, wireless broadband of 300KbpsÂ to 600Kbps will be widely available and people on the go will demand more processing power in devices to take advantage of new services, he said. To fill this need, device makers will have to fill in the comparatively empty market space between notebook PCs on the high end and cell phones on the low end, Jha said. Particularly in less developed countries, notebooks won't work as the next step up from phones for mobile data, he said. Growing demand for processing power on mobile devices plays into Qualcomm's business plans. The pioneer of CDMA has aggressiveÂ plans for new siliconÂ to be introduced over the rest of this year and 2007. Manufacturers are already working with one Qualcomm chip set, the MSM (Mobile Station Modem) 7200, that has almost 1GHz of speed: The chipset includes both an ARM 11 chip of 400MHz to 500MHz and an ARM 9 running at about 250MHz, Jha said. That chipset will support HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access), a next-generation version of UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) with a higher upstream speed, and will be able to handle VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) calls, he said. WiMax will help to change the game on mobile wireless as Intel integrates it into chip sets for notebook PCs, Jha said, though he downplayed the rival wide-area wireless technology. WiMax could become a good technology but needs work, Jha said, particularly in its support for voice and real-time applications. Flash-OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing), a rival to WiMax, has advantages because it was developed within a single company instead of by a committee, Jha said.Â Qualcomm acquiredÂ that company, Flarion Technologies, last year. In an interview following his presentation, Jha said Qualcomm is already talking with Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN), a group of mobile operators that last week demanded better licensing terms for network technology. Qualcomm has come under fire for its royalty practices. Jha said his company already meets the industry standard for fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing terms but NGMN wants something beyond that.
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Qualcomm (Quote, Chart) is in talks to acquire a semiconductor design firm to help satisfy demand for its third-generation CDMA (define) wireless devices, the company said Thursday.
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The mobile phone industry has been  predicting for years that the future of television is wireless.
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Verizon Wireless on Thursday launched a broadcast TV service for cell phones in about 20 Midwestern and Western markets, charging $15 to $25 a month for the initial lineup from eight leading networks.
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BBC One, ITV1 and Channel 4 are to be broadcast to mobile phones as part of a new mobile TV service.
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Qualcomm said yesterday that it would pay $170 million to acquire Iridigm Display Corp., a small company that has patented technology used in screens on wireless devices.
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Mobile multimedia content will get its own nationwide network in the US by 2006 if an $800m (Â£435m) project by Qualcomm goes according to plan.