When Paul Jacobs took over the reins of Qualcomm in 2005 from his father, the company was known as a CDMA technology player. Since then, thanks to the phenomenal impact the chip-making firm has had on the growth of 3G, it has now evolved into a wireless technology company.

Qualcomm's market capitalisation increased more than 60 per cent, to roughly $90 billion today compared with July 1, 2005. Annual revenues are expected to increase by 149 to 159 per cent against FY 2005 to an estimated range between $14.1 billion and $14.7 billion in FY 2011. Total cash and marketable securities have increased by 180 per cent since June 2005 to $21.1 billion as of March 2011. Jacobs talked about his vision for the future at a virtual global media conference where Business Line was the only Indian publication to be invited. Excerpts.

What is Qualcomm's strategy in the emerging markets to drive Internet penetration and data services growth?

The key thing in emerging markets is to have affordable devices and services. And so we've invested a great deal in driving down the cost of the devices by integrating more and more functionality into a single chip. That makes it much easier for manufacturers to create low-cost devices.

People talk about targeting the $100 smart phone and we're working very hard to make those kinds of price points a reality.

What's your vision for the future of Qualcomm?

The vision for Qualcomm has changed over time, all the way back from the very beginning days of the company, when really all we were working on was with a bunch of people who were expert at digital communications theory and we were going to apply that to commercial and consumer application.

And right now, the vision that we're working out into the future is that the wireless will be embedded in the world around us, including projectors and screens, microphone, thermostat on the wall, and cash registers, the kiosk that might distribute content to you. There's just a lot of opportunities to embed wireless into the world around us.

One area where we have spent some time now is on a technology called Augmented Reality, which maps virtual objects into images of the real world, making it look like they're actually there. So you look around and move your phone around and it looks like there's something actually in the real world, but when you move the phone away, you don't see it anymore because it's not actually there. It's in a virtual world. You would think of using this for gaming and entertainment, to start with.

Five years down the line, where do you see the wireless ecosystem partnerships heading? Do you foresee the chipmakers partnering together to enhance the device life cycle?

We're in a time when there's new players coming into the wireless ecosystem. There are many different high-level operating system vendors all competing.

People talk a lot about Google with the Android system and Apple. But there are many others. Microsoft and Nokia is a big partnership. Then there's RIM and there's HP and a number of different operating systems. And then there are the Facebooks and the Twitters of the world. So it's quite difficult at this point to extrapolate how these partnerships are going to go forward.

From Qualcomm's point of view, we want to be an enabler to all these different companies. So whether to wireless operator or an Internet company or a manufacturer or an application developer, we're trying to be the company that people know can provide them with the best performance, with the ability to optimise their device or application or service on our chipsets.

As for the chipmakers partnering, there will be consolidation in the chip industry. So there may be fewer of these chip makers in the future.

Which is the most vulnerable spot on the road to integrated cell-phone ecosystems that you foresee, and what can be done about it?

I think probably the biggest issue that we have right now is the access to spectrum. So the issue is that we have very, very strong demand for new capabilities that are coming out as people are adopting them very quickly, particularly when they all want to watch streaming video or very high bandwidth games or entertainment. So that, to me, is probably the weakest spot in the whole chain that delivers these kinds of services and devices to people. We spend a great deal of effort, working with regulators, trying to find ways to open more spectrum up.

We also built new technologies to try and make that possible so that regulators can provide some spectrum that might otherwise have been difficult to use.

How big is the opportunity for you in India, given that 3G has just started? And is Qualcomm looking at licensing partnerships directly with Indian handset makers?

We have been working with companies in India, and I think it's a very exciting market. We see companies in India, such as Micromax, for example, driving the smart phone prices down dramatically. It's a tremendous growth opportunity, and really the key there is to provide a broad range of devices. The other thing that I think is quite interesting in India is that the (BWA) auctions will provide the opportunity to launch (LTE, TDD), and that will be one of the earliest launch of (LTE, TDD) in the world. We will really try and drive the cost down as hard as we can on the low end to make sure that the broadest range of people have access to it, not just the people living in the cities, but people living in the villages.

>tkt@thehindu.co.in

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