Qualcomm Refocuses On Mobile Banking, TVQualcomm Refocuses On Mobile Banking, TV

With its Ultramobile Broadband (UMB) effort all but dead a year ago and competing wireless technology WiMax beginning to spread like wildfire around the world, Qualcomm's concentration on LTE and some additional wireless efforts came into clearer focus this week as the San Diego company discussed its future.

Outlining future strategies, Qualcomm indicated it's focusing more on its MediaFLO mobile broadcast TV and its Firethorn mobile banking technologies to carry it in the near term while it develops its Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless infrastructure and its Snapdragon platform for future inroads in wireless mobile.

With its UMB effort virtually relegated to history a year ago after the world's leading cell phone service providers announced they were committed to LTE, Qualcomm had to join the LTE crowd and it's done so with a vengeance. LTE isn't expected to take hold in a big way until 2010 and 2011. In the meantime, Qualcomm has been accelerating the development of its Snapdragon chipset platform and a companion effort called Kayak. Both are aimed at emerging markets.

MediaFLO is operated in 62 markets, but it's expected to get a boost in February when the big switchover to digital TV takes place. Qualcomm purchased $555 million worth of spectrum in the FCC's 700-MHz auction earlier this year, and the purchase will be used to spread MediaFLO. The new spectrum will enable the company to address 108 markets by the end of 2009, according to media reports.

In an announcement Friday, Qualcomm's Firethorn mobile banking and payments unit unveiled an upgrade that will enable the banking application to present broader mobile functionality that will appeal to consumers. New marketing features give service providers the ability to offer promotions and rewards, while a customization feature enables providers to tailor certain features for consumers.

"Firethorn's solutions shines a light on what consumers, financial institutions, wireless operators, and, eventually, merchants can expect from mobile commerce in the future," Firethorn CEO Tripp Rackley said in a statement.

Qualcomm also said this week that it was dropping its UMB effort and would focus its energies on LTE. Earlier this year, Qualcomm announced it was expanding its device and base station chipset road maps to include LTE, and that it expects to begin shipping multimode LTE chipsets in 2009. The components would be backward compatible with existing 3G UMTS and CDMA2000 network technologies.