The Hindu Business Line : Qualcomm drops plan to take stake in Reliance Info

IT'S official now. Exactly two years after announcing that it would pump in $200 million to pick up four per cent equity stake in Reliance Infocomm, Qualcomm has decided to drop the plan.

According to Dr Irwin Mark Jacobs, Chairman and CEO of Qualcomm, since Reliance has already rolled out its nationwide network and does not have any further investment requirements, the earlier agreement has been closed.

Similarly, Tata Teleservices too has not approached the company for any investments as of now, so the question of picking up stake in any domestic company does not arise.

Speaking to newspersons, he said that on the other hand, Qualcomm was looking for investment opportunities in software companies in India.

The company is bullish on its prospects in the country in view of the massive rollouts that companies such as Reliance and Tata has done on the CDMA platform.

"The next opportunity we have here in India will be on the development of software, and possibly working with manufacturers of equipment. The chances are that we will make investments in companies that develop software," he said.

"We may invest up to $5 million in small and medium-sized software companies from a $400-million fund that has been set up for such investments worldwide.

"We are always open to opportunities. Some of them may be small software companies who write applications for various devices that will be used for CDMA."

Mr Jacobs also said that Qualcomm would consider establishing an R&D centre in India either through an alliance with a software company or on its own.

The centre will have the facilities to provide software testing, assistance as well as develop software. For this purpose recruitment has already commenced but the exact number of such centres and the investment to be made has not been firmed up.

The company is also in talks with GSM operators to deploy its latest offering - GSM1x - which allows existing subscribers to enjoy the benefits of enhanced CDMA services while preserving the existing platform layer.

In other words, the cellular operators can take advantage of the increased voice and data capabilities that CDMA enables, without having to leave their existing global system of mobile (GSM) platforms.

Qualcomm intends to bridge the divide between both the groups with the GSM1x technology.

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