qualcomm – Steve Blum's Blog

5G hype gets a reality check in 2020

19 April 2019 by Steve Blum
5G, Apple, Intel, mobile broadband, qualcomm

It looks like 2020 will be the year that genuine 5G smartphones will finally be in the hands of consumers. Two developments this week cleared away significant uncertainty about who will be offering 5G phones, when it will happen and whose technology they’ll use.

The two companies settled a long running legal dispute over intellectual property rights to core 5G technology, including a deal for Apple to buy modem chips, which do the heavy processing work of wrangling radio waves into data streams at one end and reading them at the other.… More

5G is about video and gaming, says Qualcomm exec at LG press event

7 January 2019 by Steve Blum
4k, 5G, CES2019, lg, qualcomm

The big benefits of 5G technology and networks will be old benefits, just more of them. 5G will be sold to consumers as a way to watch high bandwidth video and play fast twitch games. Judging from LG’s opening press conference at CES in Las Vegas this morning, 5G service is all about 8K video streaming, instant 4K video downloads and low latency multiplayer gaming.

This limited focus might be industry-wide. The 5G announcements were made by a Qualcomm executive, Jim Tran, vice president of product management.… More

Trump builds a virtual wall to fence high tech companies in

13 March 2018 by Steve Blum
public policy, qualcomm, techfreedom

Broadcom will not buy Qualcomm, and will not become the third largest chipmaker in the world, behind Intel and Samsung. Not because the eye watering price – $117 billion, the largest such high tech transaction ever – is too high. Not because the deal doesn’t make economic sense. It’s because U.S. president Donald Trump says it will harm U.S. national security.
Using his authority to define what national security needs are and squash transactions that threaten them, Trump categorically blocked Broadcom’s Singapore-based corporate parent and its Californian affiliate from buying San Diego-based Qualcomm.… More

ARM is a growing server-side threat to Intel

1 February 2014 by Steve Blum
ARM, broadcom, CES2019, geek stuff, Intel, pepcom, qualcomm

Low profile, high potential.

2014 will be the year that specialised ARM-based chips gather momentum in the server market. That was not good news for Intel as it scrambled at CES to maintain relevance in the mobile device market. The last thing it needs – but the next thing it’s going to get – is competitive pressure on server processors, an increasingly rare example of a growth market that it dominates.

ARM maintained a relatively low profile at CES, leaving center stage to companies, like Qualcomm, that license its microprocessor architecture and make the chips that rule the smart phone and tablet space.… More

Mobile innovation will continue to be the growth engine of consumer electronics

7 January 2014 by Steve Blum
att, CES2019, consumer electronics, ericsson, innovation, mobile, qualcomm

Left to right: Vestberg, moderately bright moderator Andrew Keen, Jacobs, Donovan.

Qualcomm’s outgoing CEO, Paul Jacobs, Ericsson’s CEO Hans Vestberg and AT&T mobile executive John Donovan sat down on stage at CES this morning, for a conversation about the “global innovation of mobile”.

The longest view ahead came from Jacobs. “One thing that’s cool and scary and at the same time is neuromorphic computing”, he said. Qualcomm is trying to reverse engineer natural brains – starting with insects and working up to humans – to build computers with high cognitive functions that operate on relatively little energy.… More

Intel CEO's vision for a post-Windows world

7 January 2014 by Steve Blum
Android, CES2019, consumer electronics, innovation, Intel, linux, mobile, qualcomm

Time for Linux and kin.

“This is a consumer show, like it or not”, said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, as he gave his maiden CES keynote talk last night. Judging by what he said (and didn’t say), the consumer electronics world is built on Linux and Android. His focus was on wearables.

“They don’t integrate all the features you want, you still had to have something else with you”, Krzanich said about smart watches and other wearables.… More

Qualcomm's CEO-elect backs away from Microsoft

6 January 2014 by Steve Blum
Android, CES2019, consumer electronics, microsoft, mobile, qualcomm

Mollenkopf prepares to step into the spotlight.

“We continue to be optimistic about the future of the Windows ecosystem”, said Steve Mollenkopf, the man picked to take over as CEO of Qualcomm, starting in March. He was responding to a question about Qualcomm’s relationship with Microsoft, during a refreshingly informal press conference at CES today.

What Mollenkopf didn’t say, though, was even more important.

When quizzed about Qualcomm’s ability to move beyond media consumption and into mobile productivity devices, such as the Windows tablets that have stalled in the marketplace, Mollenkopf talked up the benefits of supporting multiple operating systems – which Qualcomm vigorously does – and then started waxing poetic about the wonders of media consumption.… More

De facto M2M protocol might be decided by appliance makers

4 January 2014 by Steve Blum
alljoyn, CES2019, geek stuff, haier, linux, M2M, mobile, qualcomm

Popular standards flow from the lowest common denominator.

From Ericsson’s 50 billion node mobile universe to Qualcomm’s 1,000X meme, there’s been no shortage of grand vision for machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity at CES. Meaningful standards are lacking, but at least a consensus seems to be building around what to call it: the Internet of things – IoT.

Since it’ll be using the same, old Internet, there’s no particular worry about how to deliver data from point A to point B, and back again.… More

Cities and carriers won't win new mobile bandwidth by playing under the old rules

12 December 2013 by Steve Blum
att, broadband, mobile, public policy, qualcomm, small cells, wca

Just the beginning for urban mobile crowding.

If mobile data networks are going to be capable of handing 1,000-times more traffic in the near future – as Qualcomm believes they will – the number of cell sites will have to increase by 100-times, at least in dense urban areas. That was the pictured painted last night by Ronen Vengosh, vice president of marketing and business development for PureWave Networks, at a small cell seminar organised by the Wireless Communications Alliance on Qualcomm’s Santa Clara campus.… More

Looking for the Facebook of mobile medical platforms

26 October 2013 by Steve Blum
consumer electronics, diabetes, ihealth, M2M, mobile, pepcom, qualcomm

With 26 million people – more than 8% of the population – in the U.S. suffering from diabetes, a device that wirelessly tracks blood glucose levels will find a ready market. Which is what iHealth is targeting with a new, networked glucose monitor that was previewed at Pepcom’s Holiday Spectacular in San Francisco last week. Piece by piece, this consumer oriented medical device maker is also building an online health and wellness management platform.

The monitor costs $80 and connects to an iOS or Android device via Bluetooth.… More