Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

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O2 unveils first phone in Europe with Qualcomm uiONE interface
5th September 2006
By Staff Writer

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=C64E968F-2612-4450-AAD8-74A1EB6121D9

UK-based mobile group O2 Plc has unveiled the first cellphone in Europe to feature the uiONE technology from Qualcomm Inc, enabling it to offer own-brand phones with a common user interface, regardless of the underlying hardware and operating system.

The O2 Ice handset is a 3G phone to be marketed in two of the three countries in which the group has operations: the UK and Germany. The phone is manufactured by Chinese ODM provider Pantech & Curitel, and by deploying the user interface technology from San Diego, California-based Qualcomm, O2 gains the ability to offer O2-branded phones with a user interface that spans across a variety of providers.

AdvertisementMatt Hooper, director of marketing for Qualcomm's internet services division in Europe said that although uiONE is part of Qualcomm's BREW toolkit, it can be deployed in isolation. The only requirement is that it runs on a BREW client as a "porting layer". He said it can run alongside Java, and gives access to both non-BREW and BREW applications, enabling the operator to add the latter in parallel, without having to sacrifice any of the former.

It can also trigger a browser session for apps that require internet access, but the phone is not being offered as part of the operator's O2 Active mobile internet service, nor the i-Mode service it offers.

For Qualcomm, the launch of the Ice handset is significant because it is not only the first in Europe, but also the first from an operator in Europe's GSM world. All the other carriers that have deployed uiONE belong to the CDMA camp where Qualcomm already reigns supreme in terms of intellectual property and silicon market share. They are Verizon Wireless, Sprint, Alltel, and US Cellular, and in the APAC region, Telecom New Zealand.

As the underpinning for an own-brand phone strategy that bypasses the big brands like Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung, deploying uiONE opens the way for ODMs, who in turn are major target customers for Qualcomm's 3G chipset offerings, on both the cdma2000 and W-CDMA sides. There are no other formally announced operators from the GSM world using uiONE, but it is public knowledge that Italy's TIM was represented at Qualcomm's annual BREW Conference in June when an exec described projects it had under way with various parts of the toolkit, including the user interface part.