The future is mobile
All the signs are that the mobile Internet is where much much of the focus of the technology industry will be for the foreseeable future. Companies from across the technology spectrum, like Intel, NVIDIA, Nokia and Acer are all adapting their strategies to grab as big a slice of that pie as possible.
But it could be argued that the company best positioned to capitalise on this trend is Qualcomm. While most of its recent growth has been driven by the incremental revenue it receives every time a 3G phone is sold, much of its efforts are directed at exploiting the next generation of mobile connectivity, when the mobile Internet is really set to explode.
At a recent event in London, Qualcomm showed-off a broad and diverse array of technologies, all designed to contribute to the mobile Internet ecosystem. So, of course, we had 3G chips, as well as a look at Qualcomm's chosen 4G standard - LTE - and devices based on its Snapdragon chip. But additionally we were shown new screen technologies and some Qualcomm cloud services designed for handheld devices.
But just as e-commerce has been one of the primary reasons for buying a PC in the Internet age, mobile commerce is set to explode as smartphones become ubiquitous. However, with screen sizes typically in the three to four inch range, a very different kind of interface is required to ensure mobile commerce is a positive user experience.
Qualcomm's view is that it doesn't just want to be a chip maker for mobile devices, it wants to enable the whole mobile Internet experience. Barring Intel's anticipated entry into the smartphone market, all handheld devices will use the ARM instruction set, which means no full Windows. This means the software development environment is potentially far more open for smartphones than it is for PCs.
