Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

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Qualcomm to tap entry-level segment

Mithun Roy
Monday, November 14, 2005 22:54 IST

http://dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=9845

MUMBAI: Like its peers and sometime-rivals Nokia, Siemens and Samsung, Qualcomm, the code-division multiple access (CDMA) technology pioneer, also believes that entry-level handsets are the way to grow in India.

It is a market that Irwin Jacobs, Qualcomm’s founder-chairman, believes has immense potential.

According to him, “Qualcomm will stress its proprietary technology’s ability to combine data and voice together so that consumers can benefit from the advanced technology. In this regard, Jacobs said, Qualcomm’s CDMA 2000 platform has been a success.

CDMA2000 is a third-generation mobile telecommunications standard that uses CDMA, a multiple access scheme for digital radio, to send voice, data and signaling data between mobile telephones and cell sites. It has a relatively long technical history, and remains compatible with the older CDMA telephony methods such as CDMAOne first developed by Qualcomm. The number of subscribers using the CDMA2000 technology surpassed 200 million worldwide in October, just 19 months after the industry celebrated the 100-million milestone.

Jacobs said, “CDMA2000 is the most successful wireless technology in the history of wireless services. The day isn’t far off when most mobile users in India will use CDMA2000 technology, which will surpass GSM technology.”

Bhagwan D Khurana, group president, Reliance Infocomm Ltd, said, “The CDMA2000 is better than GSM technology as people are opting CDMA technology due to low costs and high speed. Our immediate focus is on the low-end handset as this is the segment where the growth lies.”

Experts feel that at present, about two-thirds of mobile phones worldwide operate on GSM, but CDMA will gain further ground in the coming years.

Qualcomm dominates the market for technology and chips for CDMA. It also sells licenses and chips for Wideband-CDMA (W-CDMA), a high-speed wireless technology that is being adopted in Europe as an upgrade for slower networks based on global system for mobile (GSM) communications.

The company, currently. has two centres in India, Mumbai and Hyderbad and employs 200 people. According to Jacobs, “We will continue to expand by hiring more people in India.”

Qualcomm’s India centres are into designing chipsets, and developing software for chipsets, besides providing support to operators deploying CDMA technology.