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July 2, 2010

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said his company was expanding its Brew mobile platform into China and touted Qualcomm's move into augmented reality during opening remarks at the company's Uplinq conference Thursday.

Jacobs said the company's new Brew mobile platform was an ideal technology for what he called "mass-market smartphones" and emphasized several recent developments with the operating system, including its expansion onto AT&T and Sprint's networks and the upcoming launch of a Brew app store in China.

There are currently 250 million Brew-enabled phones in the market today, Jacobs said. "These are low-cost smartphones for the masses," he said.

Qualcomm also showed off a proof-of-concept game developed by Mattel based on the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em game from the 1960s.

The demo was based on Qualcomm's new vision-based augmented reality platform, which will be released to mobile developers in mid-October. The company has established a R&D center for the platform with the Georgia Institute of Technology and is partnering with gaming developer Unity Technologies to bring the technology to Google's Android operating system.

"We knew early on that the average cell phone wasn't just going to be used for voice communications. It's very fulfilling to see that vision come true," said Jacobs.

Qualcomm's new technology works by using a phone's camera to overlay virtual images like game characters onto a physical game board, such as a sheet of paper printed with an image of a boxing ring. Users are then able to control their game characters through their devices.

"This technology allows us to do things that were unimaginable not too many years ago," said Mattel Vice President of Production and Technology Peter Marx, who hosted the vision-based augmented reality demo.

Snapdragon also got a mention during Jacob's address. Snapdragon processors have been embedded in several high-end mobile devices competing with Apple's very popular iPhone, including Apple's first 4G phone, the HTC Evo.

Qualcomm says it currently has about 142 product designs in progress for the Snapdragon processor and is working to optimize the performance of programs running on its proprietary chips. Jacobs said smartphones whose software had been optimized to Qualcomm's hardware ran about three times faster than phones that hadn't been optimized.

Last April, Qualcomm’s FLO TV subsidiary said that it plans to expand its mobile TV offering later this year with the inclusion of interactive capabilities, pay-per-day and event passes, and a time-shifting viewing option.

The company said its new interactive feature will allow television viewers to interact with programming and advertising, allowing customers to click for more information about a show or click to buy a specific advertised product.

However, there was no word from Qualcomm as to how the actual purchasing of a product would be handled, least not yet.

The other updates include the pay-per-day passes that allow more pricing flexibility without having to commit to a contract.

FLO TV currently charges about $15 a month for its service. Television viewers also have the option of pre-paying $150 for one year of service or $200 for two years.

The event pass option will allow viewers to pay to watch single events with the new service.

The time shifting capability also allows viewers to store live shows on their FLO device and watch them at a later time.

This allows them to watch those stored shows outside of FLO’s coverage area, which Qualcomm recently mentioned covered more than 210 million potential customers in over 110 U.S. markets.

FLO TV currently offers full–length simulcast and time–shifted programming from ABC Mobile, Adult Swim Mobile, CBS, CNBC, CNN Mobile, Comedy Central, Discovery, Disney Channel, ESPN Mobile TV, FOX Mobile, FOX News Channel, MSNBC, MTV and NBC 2Go.

Overall, Qualcomm says it has invested more than $1 billion building out the FLO network that it is marketing to wireless carriers as a way to offload high-bandwidth video traffic from their cellular networks.

Overall, both Verizon Wireless and AT&T offer mobile television services using the FLO network, though wireless industry analysts have noted that adoption has so far been muted with neither carrier announcing subscriber figures.

For its part, Qualcomm has recently moved beyond the traditional mobile market for the service launching portable devices as well as embedded solutions for cars and SUVs.

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Source: Qualcomm.