Qualcomm is entering the world of IoT. CEO Steve Mollenkopf said the company, which has bested Intel, TI, Samsung and MediaTek in the market for chips used in Android phones, is now "going into a number of adjacent markets leveraging what we are developing in mobile."
 
The Snapdragon processor is now powering more than 1 billion Android phones, said Mollenkopf, noting the company sold 748 million MSM chips in calendar 2013 alone. Some 1,350 Snapdragon devices have been announced, with 525 more in design.

Now, the company is veering away from smartphones to bring computing power and connectivity to the world of Internet of Things.

Just last week, the San Diego-based company showcased its latest innovations, including watches like the Timex Ironman, which uses one of Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips and its Mirasol display.

The watches get a bad rap for short battery life, but Raj Talluri, Qualcomm's head of product management, said the company is not yet ready to make a chip customised for wearables. "When markets are not large enough and people are not sure of all the use cases, they use what's out there, and as markets mature, we can make more optimised silicon," he told a press gathering.

Most of the new watches use 640 x 480 pixel displays that refresh at 60 frames per second, he noted. "That's like phones a few years ago, so you want the same experience [as the phone] but at a much lower power."

But whether consumers give any of the watches the time of day remains to be seen. Even in the wake of the Apple Watch debut, a panel on wearables here concluded—as so many do these days—the killer product in wearables has yet to be designed.

Robots and drones, especially geared for the maker community, are another emerging market mobile chipmakers are courting these days. "A robot is basically a smartphone with four DC motors," quipped Mollenkopf, rolling out the Snapdragon Micro Rover.

Qualcomm showed its diminutive Micro Rover running next to a more muscular metallic dragon that the company prototyped to demonstrate its visual recognition technology.

Start-up Brain Corp. showed its EyeRover, a robotic platform capable of learning tasks like how to navigate around objects. It runs on a board using a Snapdragon SoC and an FPGA for low-level tasks such as handling I/O and managing actuators.

The company, founded by a team of San Diego-based neuro-scientists, will start selling its board and software next month. It already is working on a next-generation board with a more powerful Snapdragon SoC. ARM cores are the bottleneck for its Linux-based learning software.

Samsung's Gear VR 4 was also a big hit on the exhibit floor. The device is one of three smart glasses products to support Qualcomm's new Vuforia SDK for digital eyewear. Epson and newcomer Osterhout Design Group offer the others.

The Samsung headset had the highest resolution and most immersive experience of the three. It uses optics licensed from Oculus VR but does not have the full 135-degree viewing angle of that company's Oculus Rift.

Meanwhile, the Osterhout Design Group's ODG R-7 is an impressive design for a new entrant. It supports stereo 720-progressive displays on a transparent screen with plug-in lenses for people who need corrective lenses. I stepped through a panoramic landscape and watched a 3D movie on them.

The glasses use a Snapdragon chip and support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS radios. Each ear piece builds in a 650 mAh battery. The powerful headsets actually use a heat sink, but the company claims they won't singe your eyebrows.

The glasses will cost $5,000 and target business productivity users such as maintenance workers.

Qualcomm demonstrated its AllJoyn connectivity software running on an LG TV and other devices. VP Rob Chandhook noted Electrolux, one of the world's biggest white goods makers, plans to use the software, too. The company made AllJoyn open-source in an effort to make it a default glue for the Internet of Things.

In chips, the company's QCA 4002 is aiming for use in consumer IoT systems. The 1x1 .11n dual-band chip uses a Tensilica core. The company expects to migrate it eventually to an ARM-based design for a full microcontroller function.

Long-term, Qualcomm sees the emerging .11ah standard for unlicensed bands in the 700-900MHz range as the next killer transport for IoT. But products generally supporting whole-home coverage at a few Mbit/s won't emerge until next year and may take five years getting widespread use, said Michael Stauffer, a Qualcomm business development manager.

MediaTek is also delving into the world of IoT. The Taiwan-based company recently rolled out a global initiative, called MediaTek Labs, which will allow developers to start creating wearable and other IoT devices.

The Labs program features the company's LinkIt development platform, which contains MediaTek's Aster MT2502 chipset and the LinkIt OS. In addition, the program also provides software and hardware development kits, technical documentation as well as technical and business support for developers, makers and service providers.

Qualcomm recently went after MediaTek's territory in the market of low-end devices when it introduced the Snapdragon 210, which focuses on bringing 4G LTE to entry-level smartphones and tablets. According to CNET, the processor could boost Qualcomm's expansion efforts in China, India and Latin America, where MediaTek is known to have developed a strong market.

By: DocMemory
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