Qualcomm: The King Of Three Hills

Qualcomm is one of my top favorite companies. I got infected by it more than ten years ago by George Gilder. Today I tried to check what I have written about Qualcomm over the five years this blog is active. The search returns four pages of results.

For years Qualcomm has been "all mobile". It obviously started with CDMA, the wireless data transmission technology used today in various incarnations (including HSPA) by all MNOs (Mobile Network Operators) across the Globe. Qualcomm pioneered the technology and has always been the largest supplier of baseband chips used both in base stations and mobile handsets.

Over time mobile phones evolved to be more computers than just phones. A need for mobile application processors was born. Qualcomm answered the trend launching the most successful mobile application processor to date - the Snapdragon. Snapdragon today powers the entire line of the latest Windows Phone 7 handsets. It is also in the heart of virtually every phone manufactured by HTC, the #1 supplier of Android handsets. And the latest Snapdragons - the dual core QSD8672 are probably the most wanted / most powerful mobile processors on the market today.

Having almost monopolized the market with baseband cellular modem chips and later with mobile application processors, Qualcomm is about to reign the third mobile subsystem - the display. They will get there with the introduction of Mirasol displays. Mirasol is the technology Qualcomm acquired several years ago, but surprisingly has not emerged as a market leading solution. This will change in 2011. I suppose Mirasol will be the hit of the January Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas.

What is so special about Mirasol? Well, simply put, it addresses two most important drawbacks of currently used display technology. Outdoor visibility and power consumption. Using reflected light, the brighter the ambient light, the better the image. Imagine taking your iPad to the beach... And being MEMS-based (interferometric modulation), it consumes power only when changing the state. So a still image does not consume any light. Say hello to a tablet with a battery lasting a week or more...

Initially there will be one size. 5.7-inch, 220ppi XGA. So if you shop for an Internet tablet with the intention of using it outdoors, or a color ebook reader, you may consider waiting a while. On January the 5th, 2011, we will definitely see where Mirasol lands. Speculations point to a full-color Kindle, being a crossover between an ebook reader and a tablet. Time will tell. The Kindles already have WebKit - based browsers and adding color would make them the platform of choice for ebooks and, more importantly, magazines. Add the WiFi/3G whispernet to the mix, and you have the killer device of 2011. I can't wait...