Today, well, not so much.

For those who have already forgotten what the smartbook even was, the idea was to have a low-cost device that looked a lot like a netbook, but offered far better battery life and instant-on capabilities.

But once Apple released the iPad, everyone started focusing on tablet devices rather than on little notebooks.

“Obviously, tablets are the flavor of the day,” Jacobs said in an interview on Tuesday, ahead of his panel discussion at the Churchill Club.

The good news for Qualcomm, Jacobs said, is that the tablet requirements are basically the same as those for a smartbook.

“We probably did ourselves a little bit of a disservice by using [the term] smartbooks because people then thought notebooks and therefore it was a clamshell form factor,” he said. “We always thought about them not in terms of form factor but in terms of what they did, meaning always on, instant on, always connected, always downloading–the tablet designs that are out are doing that.”

Jacobs said we will probably see some devices with a physical keyboard, but said that next year we’ll continue to see far more slates than clamshells. The same, he notes, is also holding true for the phone.

“Keyboards on smartphones have become less and less evident for most of them,” he said.

For its part, Qualcomm is working on making its processors faster and more power efficient. A dual-core chip, due in the first half of the year, will offer five times as much performance or provide the same oomph as the current chips while using only a quarter as much power.

Since Jacobs has a good view of all the various devices coming to the market, I asked him whether he thinks that a couple of years from now we will still see five or six competing smartphone operating systems.

“A couple years from now I think we will,” he said. “Five to 10 years from now, I think there will probably be some winners and some losers although it’s pretty hard to say who those are going to be because different companies bring different things to the table.”

The carriers will bring some pressure, he said, given they have to provide support and shelf space to all the different operating systems. However, he also said it’s likely that some alternate channels will emerge beyond just sales from the carriers.

“It’s hard to put a time frame on when more consolidation will happen,” he said. “I think right now we are in a period of expansion. You are going to see more stuff….Everybody is chasing [Google] Android and Apple right now, but I think there’s room for a lot of diversity, at least in the near term.”

And so does Google, according to Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, who lauded the company’s recent tablet efforts with some Jobsian descriptives Thursday.

Discussing Nvidia’s Tegra chip during the company’s third-quarter earnings call, Huang said we’ll see Google and its partners bring some killer Android tablets to market in the months ahead.

“Although they’re a little bit behind, the work that Andy Rubin’s team is doing at Google is just really amazing,” Huang said. “I mean, this is clearly a world-class engineering team. And they’re building a magical product. So I’m looking forward to the next generation of Android phones and tablets that are coming out. And I think it’s going to really, really surprise people and delight consumers everywhere.”

A magical product…that surprises and delights. Works for Jobs, right?

Well, at least he didn’t say “magical and revolutionary.”

Here at All Things Digital, we’ve always prided ourselves on our journalism efforts, while also fully embracing the fast-paced new world of blogging.

So, we could not be more thrilled to announce the hiring of Ina Fried as our new reporter and blogger, covering the critically important mobile beat. She is pictured here.

Her new beat will range from wireless carriers like AT&T; to handset makers, such as Nokia and Research in Motion; to the smartphone kingpins, Google and Apple.

And if Facebook ever does make a phone, Ina will surely have the scoop.

Mobile is a beat that reaches across companies and is at the dead center of Web 3.0.

Ina is one of several new journalists we will be announcing over the next week, part of an expansion of the ATD universe. That includes a recently announced new conference series, beginning with D: Dive Into Mobile.

There is much more to come, but let’s focus on the stylings of Ina first.

As most people know, she has been at CNET for the past 10 years, most recently covering Microsoft as a senior writer.

And although she hasn’t been focused solely on mobile, Ina has been covering the area since 2000, when folks like Kyocera were trying to shove a Palm Pilot and a phone together, most recently doing a behind-the-scenes series for CNET on the birth of Windows Phone 7.

During her time at the tech news site, she also covered Apple for four years and led CNET’s coverage of the Hewlett-Packard-Compaq merger, as well as covering all manner of gadgets from the Palm Pilot to the Audrey (I have no idea what that is, but Walt Mossberg does).

Before that, she covered the chip industry for financial wire service Bridge News and also worked at the Orange Country Register and Orange County Business Journal.

She’s a graduate of Miami University (she reminds me that’s the one in Ohio not Florida, pointing out they are better at ice hockey than football.)

Beyond breaking all kinds of stories on the Microsoft beat, Ina has closely followed Bill Gates in his shift from software titan to global philanthropist, interviewing him frequently and tagging along on his college speaking tour earlier this year. (Last week she published separate interviews with Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the same day.)

Ina also traveled to Brazil and Colombia to explore the impact of computing in emerging markets.

She’s a former vice president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and has won a number of journalism awards, including some that she says would be seriously dangerous during an earthquake.

For example, she was named three times as one of the top 30 financial journalists under 30 by TJFR and has also been honored by the Society of Professional Journalists and Western Publishers Association, among others.

A huge softball fanatic, part of the reason she won’t start at ATD until late November is that her women’s softball team is headed to the gay softball World Series in Las Vegas (I wonder if Audrey is going).

In the meantime, you can keep up to date with Ina by following her on Twitter at Twitter.com/inafried.

Here at All Things Digital, we’ve always prided ourselves on our journalism efforts, while also fully embracing the fast-paced new world of blogging.

So, we could not be more thrilled to announce the hiring of Ina Fried as our new reporter and blogger, covering the critically important mobile beat. She is pictured here.

Her new beat will range from wireless carriers like AT&T; to handset makers, such as Nokia and Research in Motion; to the smartphone kingpins, Google and Apple.

And if Facebook ever does make a phone, Ina will surely have the scoop.

Mobile is a beat that reaches across companies and is at the dead center of Web 3.0.

Ina is one of several new journalists we will be announcing over the next week, part of an expansion of the ATD universe. That includes a recently announced new conference series, beginning with D: Dive Into Mobile.

There is much more to come, but let’s focus on the stylings of Ina first.

As most people know, she has been at CNET for the past 10 years, most recently covering Microsoft as a senior writer.

And although she hasn’t been focused solely on mobile, Ina has been covering the area since 2000, when folks like Kyocera were trying to shove a Palm Pilot and a phone together, most recently doing a behind-the-scenes series for CNET on the birth of Windows Phone 7.

During her time at the tech news site, she also covered Apple for four years and led CNET’s coverage of the Hewlett-Packard-Compaq merger, as well as covering all manner of gadgets from the Palm Pilot to the Audrey (I have no idea what that is, but Walt Mossberg does).

Before that, she covered the chip industry for financial wire service Bridge News and also worked at the Orange Country Register and Orange County Business Journal.

She’s a graduate of Miami University (she reminds me that’s the one in Ohio not Florida, pointing out they are better at ice hockey than football.)

Beyond breaking all kinds of stories on the Microsoft beat, Ina has closely followed Bill Gates in his shift from software titan to global philanthropist, interviewing him frequently and tagging along on his college speaking tour earlier this year. (Last week she published separate interviews with Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the same day.)

Ina also traveled to Brazil and Colombia to explore the impact of computing in emerging markets.

She’s a former vice president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and has won a number of journalism awards, including some that she says would be seriously dangerous during an earthquake.

For example, she was named three times as one of the top 30 financial journalists under 30 by TJFR and has also been honored by the Society of Professional Journalists and Western Publishers Association, among others.

A huge softball fanatic, part of the reason she won’t start at ATD until late November is that her women’s softball team is headed to the gay softball World Series in Las Vegas (I wonder if Audrey is going).

In the meantime, you can keep up to date with Ina by following her on Twitter at Twitter.com/inafried.

And so, between now and July 22, the case will be on hold, as Intel (INTC) and the FTC review and discuss a proposed consent order, the terms of which are currently confidential.

An interesting change of tack for Intel, which has vehemently denied FTC allegations that it used threats and rebate schemes to encourage exclusive deals and unfairly manipulate the chip market. If the company manages to reach an agreement with the agency, it will avoid the September trial toward which it seemed inevitably to be heading.

The company commercialized the CDMA mobile standard and its chips can be found in many of today’s smartphones. If things play out as CEO Paul Jacobs would like, Qualcomm (QCOM) chips will soon be showing up in a wide variety of consumer electronics devices as well. As Jacobs said at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, “consumer electronics devices will essentially be phones inside–different shapes, different software, but fundamentally, inside they’ll be phones.”

With its latest chips, which ably bridge the performance gap between smartphones and larger devices like netbooks and tablets, Qualcomm is delivering on Jacobs’s prediction. And that is increasingly putting the company at odds with some formidable rivals in the ultramobile computing market–Intel (INTC), for example.

Liveblog

3:28 pm: Off to a bit of a late start here. The interview should begin momentarily.

3:31 pm: A few quick words of introduction from Walt, who notes that most of the folks in the audience have likely used Qualcomm products at one time or another, and Jacobs takes the stage.

3:32 pm: Walt–You make chips, right?

Jacobs: We ship 36 chips every second for cellphones around the world. These chips handle radio communications, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, all sorts of things. They essentially run mobile phones.

3:33 pm: Jacobs–Does anyone in this room have a simple GSMA phone? [No one does.] Then you’re all using our intellectual property.

3:35 pm: Some discussion of licensees. Jacobs notes that Foxconn is among them.

3:35 pm: Walt: Typically, your technology is buried in these devices, but now you’re introducing something that will be out front.

Jacobs says the company is working on a new display technology that uses the same thing a butterfly’s wing uses to make color. Because it’s reflective in that way, you can see it outside and in bright light. It does color and it does video. This isn’t a lab project. We’ve got a fab [fabrication], and it’s being developed.

Walt wonders when we’ll see it. Jacobs says Qualcomm hopes to get it to its partners next year.

3:37 pm: The display is called Mirasol, and it employs a bunch of tiny mirrors to display images.

Jacobs has brought a demo with him, and the display does seem impressive, certainly a big improvement over today’s e-ink.

3:39 pm: Walt–Unlike a Kindle, this thing has color, plays video and better battery life.

Jacobs: If we’re using a still image outdoors, the battery will last for a very long time–it uses very little power. If we’re running stuff, animations for example, it won’t run quite as long. But it will still be a significant improvement over what we see in devices like the Kindle and iPad today.

3:41 pm: Walt–What about downsizing these screens? Will they work on cellphones?

Jacobs says they will. In fact, Qualcomm is working with someone to develop a watch that uses it.

Walt: And this can support multitouch?

Jacobs: Yes. The display, because its MEMS technology, there are other things we can integrate into it–antennas and whatnot.

3:43 pm: Walt–So will this be a Qualcomm reader or will you build it for someone else?

Jacobs: We’ll be developing this for partners

3:44 pm: So why did you get out of the device business, asks Walt.

Jacobs: Because we sucked at it. I just said, you know this is not our core competency. So today we’re focused on chips. Technology is moving so quickly these days that if you’re not focused, you just end up doing things badly. We’re very focused on the chip business.

3:45 pm: Walt–You’ve jumped into the brains of the phone business, yes?

Jacobs: Yes we have. It’s called Snapdragon and its a microprocessor that uses ARM. These are very lower-power chipsets.

3:47 pm: Walt–But these chips are going into high-power devices. They can’t have wimpy processors.

Jacobs agrees and notes that Qualcomm is developing multicore processors for smartphones. “You think about the phone, why do you need the phone to turn on to do stuff? You don’t need to turn on the entire user interface to do something like email. So we’re managing power very carefully to extend usage time.”

3:49 pm: Walt–Is Intel (INTC) your biggest competitor?

Jacobs: That depends. Intel is on the high end. There are other smaller companies though that are low-end threats.

Walt: Do you power BlackBerrys?

Jacobs: The Verizon (VZ) Blackberrys run our chips.

3:50 pm: Walt asks for Jacobs’s thoughts on Intel’s “Intel Inside” campaign, which made the company a known brand. Has Qualcomm considered doing something similar?

Jacobs: You know we have Qualcomm Stadium, says Jacobs. And sometimes people think we make beer, not chips. The truth of the matter is, I sell to the manufacturers and the operators, but we don’t sell directly to the consumer, so a big branding campaign like that isn’t a big concern.

3:53 pm: Conversation moves on to Qualcomm’s FlowTV service. Walt notes that it hasn’t really been successful, and Jacobs agrees. But he adds that it has great potential for the future, particularly in terms of broadcasting information to smartphones, a la PointCast.

3:56 pm: Jacobs: Today when you think about FlowTV, you think about cable TV on your phone. Tomorrow, it will be more of a data service.

3:57 pm: Walt–Obviously, we’re heading toward a bandwidth congestion problem. Is there a solution?

Jacobs: Fixing the backhaul problem already helps. We’re now going to more and wider spectrum, and that helps as well. Fourth generation will feel like you’re getting a better experience as a user. The big issue, though, is getting more access to spectrum, moving people off of it. Adding additional Wi-Fi access points that are integrated into the cellular network will help as well.

Walt: Is it a good trade-off in our country to reallocate the broadcast spectrum?

Jacobs: That’s a tough question because there are people who still use it.

Q & A

Q: Qualcomm seems to be involved in a lot of sensor work. Can you talk about that?

A: One of the things we’re involved in is the development of sensors, sensors that can be stuck onto your body and can talk to your phone. Glucose monitors, for example. But battery life is very important here. So we’re spending a lot of effort developing these technologies for health care with that in mind.

Q: Can you compare SnapDragon to Apple’s A4?

A: I don’t know a lot about that because we haven’t done a tear-down of Apple’s (AAPL) processor.

Q: Can you talk about your BREW [binary runtime environment for wireless] OS and where it might be heading?

A: We actually have a lot of demand for it now. In addition to Verizon, it’s going into AT&T (T) and into Chinese operators. HTC actually just built a phone that’s BREW-based. If you had asked me a couple of years ago, I would have said BREW was headed to emerging markets. Now I think it’s headed to the low-end of the high-end market.

Q: Do you think there are other areas in which your technology might be used, education, for example?

A: Jacobs notes an experiment in education where one classroom was given cellphones running Qualcomm tech and others weren’t, and the group with the phones showed a marked improvement in its grades. “The cellphone is humanity’s biggest platform. If we can’t use it to change education or health care, then shame on us.”

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as possible. It is not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.