Click for Market Place
Qualcomm first chipmaker into Android phones
Published: 25 September, 2008
Tags >> Qualcomm | Semiconductor
HTC and T-Mobile USA managed to gain the kudos of going live first with Google Android, an on the chip front, the honors go to Qualcomm. The G1, unveiled this week, runs on the CDMA giant's dual-core MSM7201A chip.
This is a further boost for Qualcomm's belief that smartphones do not need to feature dedicated applications processors to deliver high end performance, and the G1's chip comes with fully integrated processing, multimedia, graphics and multimode. The single-chip approach reduces cost and power, but companies like Texas Instruments, with its Omap apps processors, and graphics add-on specialist Nvidia, are still hoping the performance requirements of superphones will make their products essential - as in the iPhone.
The other chipmakers will be hard on Qualcomm's heels in the Android market though, and TI, Broadcom and Marvell are among the baseband makers in the membership of Android supporters' club Open Handset Alliance. Several semiconductor makers have already demonstrated reference designs running Android - including, at the Mobile World Congress in February, STMicro, TI and Marvell - and will be hoping for design wins as more handset makers enter the market. Integrating a chip with a new operating system is not a trivial task and Qualcomm will certainly have scored points by getting into a commercial device ahead of the field. Qualcomm is a long term supplier to HTC and also an investor in the Taiwanese company.
