But shares sank 6.3 percent to $62.80 after hours, then recovered about half that, as third-quarter earnings guidance came in below expectations. Through the close, the stock was up 22 percent so far in 2012 and it has been on an upward trend for much of the last two years.

The San Diego semiconductor company raised its full-year earnings guidance, now forecasting $3.61 to $3.76 a share. In February, Qualcomm boosted its income guidance to $3.55 to $3.75. It reaffirmed its revenue guidance.

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So far, the launch hasn’t gone quite so well. First there was a lackluster review. Then, days after going on sale on Easter Sunday, the company has admitted to a software glitch and is offering people who bought one a $100 credit in addition to a software patch. The credit makes the phone free to buyers willing to take a two-year service contract.

Now the market research firm IHS iSuppli has taken a Lumia 900 apart and, in a report shared with AllThingsD that will be released later today, has determined that it costs Nokia about $209 to build. And, judging from the parts being used, it’s not exactly built like the most cutting-edge phone on the market.

In fact, it seems like Microsoft and wireless chipmaker Qualcomm are both making an effort to showcase how efficient Windows Phone 7 for mobile can be; at the same time, they seem to be aiming to entice other hardware manufacturers by demonstrating that a full-featured smartphone can be built using components that are about a generation behind the current high end, and therefore cheaper, says Andrew Rassweiler, the iSuppli analyst who supervised the teardown.

For example, the teardown found that the Lumia 900 uses a single-core Qualcomm chip that costs $17 as its main applications processor; a phone with similar features running Google’s Android OS, such as Samsung’s Galaxy SII Skyrocket, uses a higher-end dual-core processor that costs $22.

“It appears what Microsoft and Qualcomm and Nokia are trying to do here — and this is being driven by Microsoft more than anyone else — is streamline the OS so it can run on a lighter processing platform,” Rassweiler told me. “The point being is to undercut the higher end phones.”

The choices don’t end with the processor. The phone contains only 512 megabytes of DRAM memory, where most phones would use one gigabyte. And the trend is expected to continue, as the next generation of Microsoft’s mobile OS will require even less memory.

Another example: The Bluetooth chip. Nokia is using a slightly older chip from Broadcom, and not the latest, greatest Bluetooth part. The difference between them is only $2.50, but it serves as another example showing that Nokia is aiming to compete on price.

For Nokia, the strategy seems to be one of aiming to compete against other phones on price, while offering similar features. The Lumia is thought to sell for $450 at retail without a subsidy, or about $200 lower than Apple’s iPhone 4S, which starts at $649 without a contract, depending on model, and costs between $188 and $245 to build.

Microsoft is also thought to be helping Nokia out, says iSuppli’s Wayne Lam, who also participated in the teardown analysis. While software costs are not considered in a teardown analysis, he says Microsoft is thought to be making less than $5 per phone in licensing fees on the Windows Phone 7 operating system, far lower than the $15 per device it is said to want. That would be in line with the $3 per phone price that Nokia is thought to have paid in licensing fees for the Symbian OS it used previously, and of which it was a partial owner. “Nokia is getting a fantastic discount,” Lam told me.

One place where Nokia didn’t skimp? The gyroscope chip, which determines how the phone is being moved. It contains the same gyroscope chip from STMicroelectronics that goes into the iPhone 4S. There are, apparently, some things on which you simply can’t compromise.

The phone, which will go on sale Sunday, features a 1GHz Qualcomm processor, a 3.5-inch screen and the ability to act as a wireless hotspot, and will sell for $19.99 with a new contract. Sprint is aiming the phone in particular at families, touting its family-locator service as one option to pair with the phone.

“We realize that there are a lot of choices in the market when it comes to choosing the right cell phone that fits the needs of both a working parent and their family,” Sprint VP David Owens said in a statement.

It is the second tie-up this year for Sprint and ZTE, which earlier announced plans for the Optik, an Android tablet that will sell for $99 with a new two-year contract.

ZTE is among the top five phone makers in the world, but has been relatively unknown in the U.S., something it is working quickly to change.

Yet, in many cases, our phones keep working even when they’re sitting in a pocket, stuffed in a bag or resting on a table.

With battery life increasingly precious, phone and device makers are taking a number of steps to reduce the waste.

Qualcomm has an initiative, dubbed Consia, that monitors a user’s activities and learns when and where Wi-Fi is available, when the busy times are and when it’s bedtime. After a couple of weeks, the phone can decide when to connect and disconnect and when to fetch information in the background.

“People’s patterns are very different, but individually our behaviors are very predictable,” Qualcomm’s Rob Chandhok said in an interview at Mobile World Congress on Tuesday.

To protect privacy, the information is stored securely on the device and all the calculations are done locally.

Qualcomm is not alone in looking to find ways to help smartphone owners go longer between charges.

Chip companies such as Nvidia and ARM are switching from multiple fast cores to fewer or lower-power engines. Motorola’s phones suggest “smart actions” to reduce battery use, and more power-saving techniques are on their way.

ARM has an initiative called “Big, Little” that encourages its chipmaker licensees to pair a low-power A7 core with a high-power A15 engine, allowing the mobile operating system to shuttle between them as needed.

“The concept really is getting the right size processor to do the right job,” ARM’s Jeff Chu told AllThingsD. “Most of the time you are doing things that don’t need all that performance.”

Switching to the “little” core can reduce energy use as much as 70 percent, Chu said.

Phones with ARM’s new design, though, aren’t expected to start showing up until next year at the earliest.

Nvidia is taking a somewhat similar approach with its quad-core Tegra 3 processor. The chip actually has five cores — the four main ones and a fifth that can be used in place of the other four when less horsepower is needed.

Here’s Qualcomm’s video about Consia:

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120229/coming-soon-phones-that-learn-to-rest-when-you-do/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120220/nokia-qualcomm-samsung-well-positioned-for-next-round-of-mobile-patent-wars/ http://allthingsd.com/20120220/nokia-qualcomm-samsung-well-positioned-for-next-round-of-mobile-patent-wars/#comments Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:00:13 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=175948 With the mobile patent wars showing no signs of slowing any time now, it bears looking at which companies have the key patents for the next round of cellular technology.

That’s also what the folks at Article One Partners thought, so they conducted a study, along with Thomson Reuters, to see who holds what with regard to patents on 4G LTE technology.

When it comes to the patents rated “highly essential,” the study found that Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung and LG held nearly half of the patents. When adding in the proviso of the patents also being highly novel, the study found that Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung and Ericsson collectively own 55 percent of the highly essential and most novel patents.

While things are still shifting, the results should help companies better understand where they fit when it comes to the next generation of wireless technology.

“One of the things companies can use this kind of work is for landscaping,” Article One investor and director Marshall Phelps said in an interview. If a company notices it doesn’t have much intellectual property in an area that most people see as essential, Phelps said, “that might tell you where you have holes in your portfolio.”

Of course, the real problem remains — namely that most of the major wireless companies are suing one another rather than licensing each other’s technology.

“It’s a circular firing squad,” Phelps said. “The industry is not mature enough yet to figure out how to deal with each other.”

Right now, for example, Apple is suing Samsung and HTC, Microsoft is suing Barnes & Noble and Motorola, and Oracle is suing Google, to name just a few of the major legal actions gripping the industry.

Over time, though, Phelps expects that the wireless companies will figure out a way to license technology in such a way that companies can both partner and compete.

“In the high-tech world, litigation has rarely stopped anyone from competing,” said Phelps, who led intellectual property licensing at Microsoft, and at IBM before that. Phelps said that is especially true in smartphones, which necessarily must use thousands of patents worth of technology.

Phelps said he doesn’t blame companies that are struggling in the marketplace but asserting their patents.

“It’s an asset, like your building is,” he said. “If you are not using it, you should be.”

And the values of those IP buildings are skyrocketing, as evidenced by Google’s pending $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, among other deals.

“What you see with these giant purchases are companies that don’t feel they are in a good position trying to buttress their position,” Phelps said. “Everybody knows right now IP is really critical, and if you don’t got it, you better get it.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120220/nokia-qualcomm-samsung-well-positioned-for-next-round-of-mobile-patent-wars/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120217/kinect-like-gestures-and-new-camera-tricks-coming-soon-to-smartphones-and-tablets-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120217/kinect-like-gestures-and-new-camera-tricks-coming-soon-to-smartphones-and-tablets-video/#comments Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:00:30 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=175161 What surprises can we expect to see in the next generation of smartphones and tablets?

One way to answer that question is to visit the companies that make the chips that will power those mobile devices. AllThingsD did that earlier this month, traveling to Qualcomm’s hometown of San Diego. Among the things coming soon are cellphone cameras that can wait until everyone is looking at the camera and tablets that can recognize gestures, a la the Microsoft Kinect.

The gesture recognition can take place through front-facing cameras, ultrasonic detection or a combination of the two. Other things on tap include tablets with improved DTS audio and no-lag multiplayer gaming over LTE.

Those tricks and others are among the capabilities that Qualcomm says will allow Android device makers to try to stand out from the pack in a world of increasingly similar slabs of glass and metal.

“It helps them to stay alive,” said Qualcomm vice president Reiner Klement. “Without differentiation, the question becomes price, and if you are not a Chinese (manufacturer), I don’t know how you survive.”

Qualcomm says that although its latest chip can support all kinds of neat things, different phone makers will choose to incorporate different features.

Some, Klement said, are more focused on having a great camera; others on providing a top-notch gaming experience.

“It’s not one shoe fits all,” he said.

Here’s a video showing some of the new capabilities in action:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120217/kinect-like-gestures-and-new-camera-tricks-coming-soon-to-smartphones-and-tablets-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120216/augmented-reality-actually-becoming-one/ http://allthingsd.com/20120216/augmented-reality-actually-becoming-one/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:00:19 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=174398 A year ago, even proponents of augmented reality were talking more about the potential of the technology than its adoption.

These days, though, the technology is making its presence felt. Augmented reality apps are adding another layer to all kinds of real-world objects, from toys to magazines, even to Heinz Ketchup bottles that offer up recipes to anyone with a smartphone.

“It’s happening,” said Jay Wright, a senior director at Qualcomm. “We’ve hit this inflection point of adoption.”

Taco Bell has a game that can be played by pointing a phone at its meal boxes. Qualcomm is working with “Sesame Street” on an interactive playset that allows figurines of Bert and Ernie to come to life when captured by a smartphone. A museum in San Diego is using augmented reality to show how magnetism works.

“You can’t see magnetic fields,” Wright said.

Marketing remains the big driver for augmented reality. Total Immersion, another player in the space, recently launched a big campaign for Tic Tac that turns the boxes for the candy into a game, when paired with a smartphone and the companion app.

“It’s truly a national campaign, and the client is supporting the app with a multimillion dollar ad campaign,” Total Immersion CEO Bruno Uzzan said in an interview. “It shows that the market is maturing.”

Augmented reality is also useful for doing things like allowing virtual try-ons and interactive product manuals, such as this app that helps when installing a new flat-panel TV.

“For the first time, augmented reality is not being associated with (something) gimmicky, and starts being associated to return on investment,” Uzzan said.

One of the catalysts for Qualcomm’s efforts, Wright said, was when it opened its developer kit up to the iPhone.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120216/augmented-reality-actually-becoming-one/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120213/seven-questions-for-arm-ceo-warren-east/ http://allthingsd.com/20120213/seven-questions-for-arm-ceo-warren-east/#comments Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:26:25 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=173935 It’s kind of hard these days to avoid an ARM chip. There are probably five or more inside your mobile phone alone, a few in your car, some in your PC, and several more in places you wouldn’t think of, like your coffeemaker.

Things are good for ARM Holdings, the British chip company whose designs are central to so many of the chips that make modern life modern. In 2011, some 7.9 billion chips with ARM cores in them were shipped. And yet it’s not a very big company. Where Intel clocked sales of $54 billion, ARM finished the year with sales of $777 million (491.8 million pounds). It all has to do with the differences in how they do business. ARM sells the blueprints to make a core — the central brain of a chip — and then those who buy that blueprint can build their own custom parts of a chip around it.

That means an ARM-based chip from Samsung can be significantly different from an ARM chip from Broadcom or Nvidia. And yet designers from either company could probably exchange jobs, because they’re both familiar with the basic designs. ARM has become something of a lingua franca of electronics design, except in the world of personal computers and servers. Yet with Microsoft set to release a new ARM-friendly version of Windows for notebooks and tablets, and the chip firm Calxeda working on bringing ARM chips to servers, ARM’s influence is growing.

I caught up with ARM CEO Warren East over dinner in New York last week, and we talked about how its business model is going strong, and where the ARM architecture is going.

AllThingsD: When people ask me what ARM is, I tend to liken it to a recipe for cake — a cake for which you buy the basic recipe, but which you can then enhance anyway you like. Is that a fair analogy?

East: Exactly, and the doing whatever you like is very important for our business model. If you couldn’t, and we were like Intel, say, and you had to do this one thing, the only thing our licensees could — if you were to apply a licensing model to that — the only thing they could use to compete against each other is price. Whereas this way, they can do their own stuff around the basic recipe, they can differentiate. But because it’s the same microprocessor architecture, your cake recipe, then investments they make in software, or if you’re using a combination of chips from Samsung and Nivida and Qualcomm, any investment you make toward using Samsung chips is equally applicable to the others.

And you can switch to another vendor later if you like, correct?

You can, because they all do different things. If your product is about video, then Texas Instruments’ video accelerator is very good. If it’s about 3-D graphics, then Nvidia’s chips are very good. If it’s a modem you need, then Qualcomm’s chip is very good. So you can mix and match.

And it’s not uncommon for many manufacturers, whether they’re making phones or something else, to have several ARM-based chips doing many things. In a phone, the main microprocessor will be an ARM-based chip, but then also the surrounding chips doing specialized functions will be ARM chips, as well, correct?

Right. The typical smartphone will have four or five ARM chips in it. There’s the main processor, the thing you interact with as the user. Then there’s the modem, which connects to the phone network. And then there’s a connectivity processor that handles the Bluetooth and the Wi-Fi or both. And then there may be a power management processor, or a touchscreen controller, a camera, or GPS, and so on. And the next one that’s being integrated is NFC, or Near Field Communications, for payments by phone. And your 8-bit processor in the SIM card is turning into a 32-bit microprocessor, and that will likely be an ARM, as well.

When you think about competitors, who is it? Is it MIPS? Is it Intel, perhaps, down the road?

When you think about the consumer electronics space, TVs and the like, MIPS has been very strong in that space. Increasingly, as the TVs become smarter and more connected then they start to look more and more like a smartphone with a 46-inch screen. And so, actually, the infrastructure that exists around ARM makes it very compelling to put an ARM chip in there. In the computing world then, the competition is really Intel and AMD x86 chips.

Speaking of AMD, its CEO, Rory Read, raised some eyebrows at its analyst meeting recently when he mentioned ARM and described a new “ambidextrous” approach to its chips, implying, many think, that AMD might combine its x86 cores in some way with an ARM core. Can you give any visibility into what he might mean?

We can’t tell you really anything about it. But I will say something that we’ve said about this before, when people had picked up similar noises about something like this. AMD is in the business of selling microprocessors. We’re in the business of selling microprocessor designs. We wouldn’t be doing our job properly if we weren’t at least talking to them. And so we have been, for the last 10 years or so. If those discussions go anywhere, and if and when there’s something to announce to the world, we’ll do so.

How many licensees are there? Are there any that surprise you because they’re unusual or unique?

Now there are 290 licensees. It’s a good question, and one we don’t get very often. There are all sorts of weird applications. There’s a glaucoma monitor chip that’s a cubic millimeter. It’s a pressure sensor, a solar panel, a microprocessor and a radio and a battery, all in that space, so it can be fitted inside the eye so you can be tested for glaucoma. On the other extreme, we’re in a neutrino detector that’s in a kilometers-long chain of sensors, with another sensor every few meters, down in the Antarctic. So we’re in applications that are as small as a cubic millimeter to as large as several square kilometers. Looking forward, one of the ones I’m intrigued about at the moment is with a company that makes concrete. The idea is it concerns networks of sensors that would be embedded directly in the concrete. But you get the feeling that one company is going to pour the concrete and another is going to place the sensors. But this company wants to put the sensors in in the first place. We’ll just pour the concrete with the sensors already there. It’s all about energy harvesting from the vibrations in the concrete. The processors come with little wireless communications [abilities], and use hardly any energy, because the communication is only from one sensor to the next. That one is probably a few years off, but the fact that a concrete company is thinking about this is very interesting.

The next big thing is that ARM chips are coming to traditional PCs running Windows. We’ve been hearing about it for more than a year now, and Microsoft is starting to show Windows 8. Is the opportunity for ARM in PCs real, and is it going to happen?

It’s real and it’s going to happen, and it’s absolutely on track. Obviously, the detailed timeline is a matter for Microsoft and not for us. Metro is happening. It’s a big change to the user interface. They have pioneered Metro in their mobile offering, and you can sort of see where they’re going with it. But Windows 8 is going to be about Metro. That lends itself a little more to tablets in a way that they haven’t been before. That is clearly going to happen. For us and for Microsoft there are two different objectives. For them, it’s about getting a route to support the billions of Internet-connected screens that are going to appear over the next decade or so. Most of them are going to have an ARM processor in them. Without Windows on ARM, Microsoft is excluded from those products, so they need Windows on ARM. For us, a great side effect is getting into the PC world where, outside of Apple, Windows is everything, and it has been inextricably linked to Intel and x86. So now if Windows appears on ARM, we can address those 300 million PCs that are sold each year. And for us, it’s like having an extra 300 million smartphones. It’s certainly nice to have.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120213/seven-questions-for-arm-ceo-warren-east/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120210/apple-sues-motorola-in-latest-legal-spat/ http://allthingsd.com/20120210/apple-sues-motorola-in-latest-legal-spat/#comments Sat, 11 Feb 2012 03:23:32 +0000 Ian Sherr http://allthingsd.com/?p=173671 Apple filed a lawsuit against Motorola Mobility on Friday, saying Apple’s iPhone 4S is protected under a license agreement from Qualcomm. The lawsuit, which was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of California, is the latest maneuver in a series of legal battles between smartphone makers that include litigation between Apple and Motorola in Germany.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120210/apple-sues-motorola-in-latest-legal-spat/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120209/windows-on-arm-complete-with-next-version-of-office-to-arrive-with-rest-of-windows-8/ http://allthingsd.com/20120209/windows-on-arm-complete-with-next-version-of-office-to-arrive-with-rest-of-windows-8/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:01:50 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=172871 After being somewhat less than clear about its Windows-on-ARM plans, Microsoft answered a number of lingering questions on Thursday.

In an interview, Windows unit President Steven Sinofsky said that the first ARM-based machines running Windows 8 should show up around the same time as the first Windows 8 machines running traditional PC processors from Intel and AMD. He didn’t give a time frame for when that would be, but PC manufacturers and chipmakers have said they expect it to arrive later this year.

Sinofsky also said that the Windows-on-ARM machines will come with several Office apps — Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote — that have been tuned to run in a very battery-efficient manner. But Sinofsky said that, although those applications will run in the traditional Windows desktop, they will be the only programs allowed to do so, other than components of Windows itself.

“There are no other compiled dekstop apps that are available,” Sinofsky told AllThingsD. All of the other apps for Windows on ARM will be the new-style “Metro” apps.

Windows 8 for Intel and AMD chips, by contrast, will be able to run all of the kinds of programs that have traditionally run on Windows, inside a Windows 7-like desktop environment.

Although Microsoft has said that its focus around Windows 8 would be around new-style “Metro” apps, there had been significant question as to whether, and under what circumstances, programs designed to run in a classic Windows desktop might be able to run.

Windows on ARM will have the desktop as an option for Internet Explorer, the Office apps and various system functions, such as the control panel, file management and other built-in features of Windows. Sinofsky also said that the version of Internet Explorer for Windows on ARM won’t support plugins such as Adobe Flash, noting the trend in the industry away from supporting Flash on mobile devices.

Sinofsky is also penning a several-thousand-word blog post on the subject — long even for someone known for his lengthy posts. In it, Sinofsky said, he goes into more detail on the company’s plans for Windows on ARM, as well as its rationale for some of the decisions it has made.

“There have been a lot of questions,” Sinofsky said. “I want to do my best to answer them.”

Sinofsky had already ruled out some sort of emulation mode for running older Windows apps on ARM chips, noting that the whole point of running Windows on the same kinds of ARM-based chips used for phones and tablets was to gain the kind of power efficiency those chips can deliver.

Microsoft has said it will deliver an updated “consumer preview” test version of Windows 8 on Feb. 29, with plans to tout the software at an event in Barcelona. However, that test version, like a developer preview released last fall, will be available only for machines running traditional Intel and AMD chips.

Sinofsky said the company is working with chipmakers Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments to provide a limited number of test machines to those that make software, hardware and peripherals. The machines are aimed at developers, though, with easy access to the internals, and the company has no plans to make those machines available to enthusiasts, corporate customers or other testers.

Microsoft first announced its plans to allow Windows 8 to run on ARM-based machines at CES 2011.

At the time, it showed a demo of some Office apps running on ARM chips, but showed little else of its plans for the operating system. Months before, it talked about other features of the operating system. Several months later, at our D9 conference, it showed the new Metro interface for Windows, as well as its plans to feature a whole new kind of application, and its plans for a built-in store to sell these new apps.

While the goal is to have Windows-on-ARM machines out at the same time Windows 8 lands on new traditional PCs, Sinofsky noted that there is a lot of work to be done to get the entire PC ecosystem ready.

“We’re building a whole new product, on a new platform, with new partners,” he said.

Update: Sinofsky’s blog post is up, all 8,610 words of it.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120209/windows-on-arm-complete-with-next-version-of-office-to-arrive-with-rest-of-windows-8/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120201/qualcomm-posts-chipper-earnings-raises-2012-forecast/ http://allthingsd.com/20120201/qualcomm-posts-chipper-earnings-raises-2012-forecast/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:16:39 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=170429 Chipmaker Qualcomm said Wednesday it is raising its forecast for the year following a record fourth quarter in which it took in $1.4 billion in profit on revenue of nearly $4.7 billion.

Its results, as well as the forecast for the coming quarter, were ahead of what many analysts were expecting.

“We are raising our revenue and earnings guidance as our broad licensing partnerships and extensive chipset roadmap, led by our integrated Snapdragon processors, position us well for strong growth in fiscal 2012,” CEO Paul Jacobs said in a statement.

The results contrast with those from rival Nvidia, which last week cut its forecast for the quarter, blaming a slowdown in shipments of its Tegra 2 mobile processor, as well as PC market sluggishness.

As for Qualcomm, I’ll be at the San Diego-based company on Thursday looking at some of their technology and meeting with executives.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120201/qualcomm-posts-chipper-earnings-raises-2012-forecast/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120130/tileras-server-chip-challenges-intel-sort-of/ http://allthingsd.com/20120130/tileras-server-chip-challenges-intel-sort-of/#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:44:45 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=168642 It’s been awhile since there was a new chip on the scene to get excited about; one that didn’t come from Intel, and wasn’t aimed at a mobile phone. It’s been even longer since there was a chip aimed at servers. Today is one of those days.

A start-up called Tilera today unveiled a chip it calls the TILE-Gx. Essentially, it’s a super-chip with 36 cores which — so the company claims — beats a traditional Intel server chip on the key metric of performance per watt.

For those who don’t keep score in the arcane world of semiconductors, I’ll revisit some of the basics of the above paragraph. We all know that Intel and its one main rival, Advanced Micro Devices, sell chips for servers. Those chips, and those that go into PCs, are generally known as x86 chips, a name derived from the instruction set they share.

On the other hand, there are ARM chips, which are a different breed, and exist in a very different ecosystem. Scores of companies make ARM-based chips for all kinds of different uses, and they license the basics of the designs from ARM, the company, which last year did $636 million in revenue.

ARM chips show up in phones and tablets from the likes of Broadcom, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Nvidia, but not so much in PCs and servers. ARM is even the basis for Apple’s A4 and A5 chips. At CES last year, Microsoft said it would create a version of Windows 8 that will support ARM chips. And a company called Calxeda (which I initially got mixed up with Tilera) is aiming to bring ARM cores to chips running in servers.

Tilera, based in San Jose, Calif., is backed by investments from Bessemer Venture Partners, Walden International, Columbia Capital and VentureTech Alliance; plus a trio of strategic investors, Quanta Computer, NTT Finance and Broadcom. Its new chip is based around an entirely new architecture developed by Tilera’s CTO Anant Agarwal, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It forgoes both the traditional x86 and ARM architectures. Aimed squarely at servers, its intention is to get the same work done that a traditional Intel server chip does, while using less power to do it.

That’s not a trivial benefit, especially in data center environments where servers are bunched together and pushed to the performance limit. The biggest operational expense in running them is going to be power. So it’s on this point that server vendors and chip vendors obsess over saving a watt here and there — over the machine’s useful lifetime, the costs will add up considerably.

How it does this is what makes it interesting. Essentially, the cores on the chip do something that an Intel chip can’t do: They communicate among themselves. The way I understand it — and I admit I’m simplifying it greatly — the cores on an x86 chip rely on a single communications channel, called the Bus, to communicate. The Tilera architecture allows each core to communicate directly with the other cores, thus eliminating the need for the Bus and cutting back on the need for power.

The top-end chip — there are two versions — has 36 cores. A core is essentially the main computing engine on a chip. If you’re reading this on a PC, chances are the chip inside it has two cores, maybe four. It used to be that chips had only one core, until it became logical to put two or more on a single chip. I’ve always compared multicore chips to roommates folding laundry together. When there’s a big pile of laundry to be folded, one person can certainly do it, but two or four get it done faster and with less effort. Multicore chips basically prove the old adage that many hands make for fast work.

There’s an obvious appeal to a chip like this, but there are a lot of strikes against it. First, much of the server ecosystem is pretty well entrenched. Companies run what applications they already have, and are usually loath to mess with their computing environments much. Changing the architecture of the CPU chip inside the servers is about as major a decision as a CIO may ever make, and one they don’t make lightly. First they’ll have to test it and run it for awhile, and then see how it interacts with other systems. It’s not the sort of decision that happens just overnight. Also, a new architecture brings with it a lot of software compatibility questions that will give many IT departments pause.

Meanwhile, Intel, which sells chips that go into most of the world’s mainstream servers, will continue to push its power consumption down. At the same time, it’s been trying like crazy to use its Atom line of chips to mount an attack on ARM’s territory and win business from phone and tablet vendors. That effort is just now seeing its first early successes. If there’s a great long-term story in chips that bears watching, the grappling between Intel and the ever-expanding universe of ARM vendors is certainly it.

Correction: I initially thought the Tilera chip was based on the ARM architecture. I’ve revised the story to correct that.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120130/tileras-server-chip-challenges-intel-sort-of/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120110/intel-shows-just-how-it-plans-to-get-into-phones-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120110/intel-shows-just-how-it-plans-to-get-into-phones-video/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:00:34 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=162455 For years, Intel has talked about using its chips to power smartphones. Now it actually has something in its hands.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel is showing a working reference design that it is offering to any phone maker that wants to use its chips. The phone itself packs a 1.6GHz single-core Atom chip along with an array of sensors and radios.

“The sample platform we have is fully buzzword compliant,” General Manager Mike Bell said in an interview.

The company has been testing thousands of phones internally and says the performance is top of class, with battery life at least as good as most Android devices.

“We are not the best at power, but we are definitely very, very competitive,” Bell said.

Compatibility is another issue that Bell said he is asked about a lot. Nearly all Java-based Android apps should run, as well as a good number of those designed specifically for chips based on cores from rival ARM.

“We think that gets rid of the last argument people have,” Bell said.

Of course, Intel faces plenty of competition in the phone chip space, including existing Android chip providers Qualcomm, Nvidia, Texas Instruments and other challengers, such as Broadcom.

Intel is announcing two phone customers running its chips — a Lenovo phone for China slated to be released in the first half of the year and a multi-year, multi-device alliance with Motorola Mobility that will begin with a phone in the second half of the year.

Although Intel announced only the two customers, Bell indicated more names will be coming soon. (Think next month’s Mobile World Congress for an update.)

“You can imagine our business is all about scale,” he said, declining to say how many phone designs are being built around its chips, or how many customers it has.

In a roundtable with reporters, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said he was attracted to the chipmaker by both its roadmap and its approach, which focuses as much on running multiple instructions on a single chip core as it does on packing in as many cores as possible.

“What they have done is multithreading vs. multicore,” Jha said, noting there is a big debate in computer science as to which is better. Jha said that, along with other innovations like three-dimensional transistors, this will be important as the laws of physics prevent rapid performance gains just by shrinking the size of transistors.

Intel has focused its phone efforts entirely on Android for now, noting that it believes it has more people working on Android than Google does.

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120110/intel-shows-just-how-it-plans-to-get-into-phones-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120110/grover-is-at-ces-and-i-am-missing-it/ http://allthingsd.com/20120110/grover-is-at-ces-and-i-am-missing-it/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:30:36 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=162176 As I’ve let slip in more than a few tweets and posts, I am a huge “Sesame Street” fan.

Which is why I can’t believe I am missing lovable, furry Grover. The blue Muppet is making an in-the-fur appearance at CES on Tuesday, in a speech by Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs, and I am already booked.

The chipmaker has worked with Sesame Workshop on an augmented reality application.

Jacobs is also set to show off other tech stuff, including a demo of Windows 8 running on its hardware and working over AT&T’s LTE network and Lenovo’s Android-based television, which is powered by a Qualcomm chip.

But what has me sore is missing the Muppets. If you are still in Vegas, Grover, call me!

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120110/grover-is-at-ces-and-i-am-missing-it/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120104/going-against-the-flo-metropcs-to-support-mobile-broadcast-tv/ http://allthingsd.com/20120104/going-against-the-flo-metropcs-to-support-mobile-broadcast-tv/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 22:05:39 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=160007 Discount wireless carrier MetroPCS said on Wednesday that it plans to offer a new mobile broadcast television service on phones starting later this year.

The carrier is partnering with a consortium of TV stations and broadcasters to be the first to offer Dyle — their live TV application. The initial phone running Dyle will be an Android device from Samsung, MetroPCS said.

Of course, this is hardly the first stab at mobile TV. Although very popular in Korea, such service has not really taken hold. Some of the major carriers offer a limited lineup from MobiTV. Qualcomm had bigger visions with its FLO service, but shuttered the mobile TV offering and sold the spectrum to AT&T.

“We’re excited to be the first mobile service provider to deliver a unique entertainment offering like Dyle, but more important than being first is our belief that this service will meet the needs of our customers and deliver an exceptional mobile experience,” MetroPCS President Tom Keys said in a statement.

Dyle Mobile TV is the brand chosen by a consortium of content providers and broadcasters including NBC, Fox, ION Television, Univision, Hearst, Belo, Cox, E.W. Scripps and Gannett. At launch, the group plans to offer more than 72 stations in 32 TV markets.

For its part, MetroPCS plans to offer Dyle in Atlanta; Boston; Dallas-Fort Worth; Detroit; Jacksonville, Fla.; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Miami; New York; Orlando; Philadelphia; Sacramento, Calif.; San Francisco; and Tampa, Fla.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120104/going-against-the-flo-metropcs-to-support-mobile-broadcast-tv/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111222/fcc-approves-att-purchase-of-qualcomm-licenses/ http://allthingsd.com/20111222/fcc-approves-att-purchase-of-qualcomm-licenses/#comments Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:15:14 +0000 Amy Schatz http://allthingsd.com/?p=156493 Federal regulators approved AT&T Inc.’s $1.9 billion acquisition of airwaves from Qualcomm Inc. Thursday, giving AT&T a much-needed boost after its deal to acquire T-Mobile USA fell apart.

The Federal Communications Commission signed off on the deal Thursday on a 3-1 vote, with minor conditions, FCC officials said. The approval means that AT&T and Qualcomm could close the deal by the end of the year.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111222/fcc-approves-att-purchase-of-qualcomm-licenses/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111221/intel-to-detail-its-phone-plans-at-ces-next-month/ http://allthingsd.com/20111221/intel-to-detail-its-phone-plans-at-ces-next-month/#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:17:30 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=155876 Intel plans to use next month’s Consumer Electronics Show as the launching point for its effort to get serious in the market for the chips that power smartphones.

The company has come up with an iPhone-esque prototype of an Android device running its chip. More than just a concept device, though, the phone (pictured here) is a fully baked design that Intel is making freely available for phone makers to use in whole or in part.

“You’ll see a number of Intel customers using the guts of this phone to go into the market in the first half of next year,” CEO Paul Otellini said at a Credit Suisse investor conference last month. “And we’ll have more announcements of that at CES.”

Otellini is slated to give a keynote speech at the Las Vegas event on Jan. 10, so that would be a logical place for any news, though the company has also scheduled a notebook-related press conference for the prior day.

Technology Review posted a story on Tuesday, talking about Intel’s efforts and quoting Intel as saying the phones should hit the market in the first half of 2012. However, Otellini suggested in his Credit Suisse speech that Intel is aiming to have products out there sooner rather than later.

“We’ll be shipping in the first quarter of next year,” Otellini said.

Intel has previously talked about its plans for phones, and Android in particular, including at its September developer conference, when Otellini invited Android chief Andy Rubin on stage to talk about Google’s work to make Intel chips a first-class citizen for future Android releases.

The chip giant faces a host of competitors as it enters the space, including the current Android leaders — Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Nvidia. Broadcom has also said it has designs on the market, particularly the low end, an area dominated by MediaTek.

Though cognizant of the competition, Intel has said its tests show its reference design as a solid competitor not just on performance, but also in the all-important area of battery life, where many have felt that Intel could not compete with ARM-based processors.

The move is about more than phones, though. Intel already faces steep competition from ARM and Apple in the tablet arena, and with Windows 8 it will also see challenges on the PC side of things.

Leading Intel’s effort are former Infineon executive Hermann Eul, and former Apple and Palm executive Mike Bell. The chipmaker recently reorganized its mobile efforts, putting the two executives in charge of all aspects of the project.

After years of talking about being in the smartphone processor game, it will be interesting to see if Intel can actually make some headway.

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111221/intel-to-detail-its-phone-plans-at-ces-next-month/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111122/nvidia%e2%80%99s-jen-hsun-huang-on-superman-quad-core-chip-microsoft-and-apple-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111122/nvidia%e2%80%99s-jen-hsun-huang-on-superman-quad-core-chip-microsoft-and-apple-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:12:15 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=146698

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

We’re following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.

An early pioneer in graphics chips, the tech company is now aiming at the market for processors driving smartphones, tablets and, soon, PCs. Nvidia’s latest effort is a quad-core chip code named Kal-El, which is the Krypton moniker of Superman.

Is Huang the Man of Steel? Or, at least, can he steal some of major rival Qualcomm’s thunder?

Here’s the video of his onstage interview with Walt Mossberg:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111122/nvidia%e2%80%99s-jen-hsun-huang-on-superman-quad-core-chip-microsoft-and-apple-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111104/att-sees-later-closing-for-t-mobile-deal/ http://allthingsd.com/20111104/att-sees-later-closing-for-t-mobile-deal/#comments Fri, 04 Nov 2011 15:55:48 +0000 Greg Bensinger http://allthingsd.com/?p=140618 AT&T Inc. pushed back the expected closing dates for its proposed purchases of T-Mobile USA and a block of Qualcomm Inc. spectrum by as much as three months each as it battles regulatory scrutiny.

AT&T said in a regulatory filing it expects to close the $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, by the end of next year’s first half. It had originally expected the deal to close by the end of March. The carrier said its purchase of Qualcomm’s spectrum should be closed by the end of next year’s first quarter, a change from its prior expectation for year-end.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111104/att-sees-later-closing-for-t-mobile-deal/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111102/qualcomms-net-rises-22-percent/ http://allthingsd.com/20111102/qualcomms-net-rises-22-percent/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 23:29:52 +0000 Don Clark and Shara Tibken http://allthingsd.com/?p=139738 Chip maker Qualcomm Inc., continuing to benefit from sales of smartphones, issued strong fourth-quarter results and upbeat projections that sent its stock price sharply higher.

The San Diego-based company, known for selling communications chips as well as licensing patents to handset makers, also said it is reaping the benefits as consumers in emerging markets adopt cellphones that use faster 3G cellular networks.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111102/qualcomms-net-rises-22-percent/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111027/chip-makers-post-weak-results/ http://allthingsd.com/20111027/chip-makers-post-weak-results/#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:30:49 +0000 Lorraine Luk http://allthingsd.com/?p=137435 Asian chip makers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Hynix Semiconductor Inc. and Elpida Memory Inc. posted weak results on Thursday for the quarter ended Sept. 30 and some flagged that demand for chips will remain soft in coming months, highlighting how major component makers are suffering from slowing economies in Europe and the U.S.

TSMC, considered a bellwether for its client base, which includes U.S. technology companies Qualcomm Inc. and Nvidia Corp., reduced its capital-spending budget for the second time this year, citing deteriorating market conditions in a further sign of difficult times for chip makers. TSMC now expects its capital spending for this year to be $7.3 billion, down from $7.4 billion. The contract chip maker also trimmed its 2011 revenue growth target in U.S. dollar terms by half, after posting a worse-than-expected 35 percent decline in net profit for the third quarter.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111027/chip-makers-post-weak-results/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111010/mobile-devices-seen-doubling-by-2020-as-non-phones-dominate-wireless-airwaves/ http://allthingsd.com/20111010/mobile-devices-seen-doubling-by-2020-as-non-phones-dominate-wireless-airwaves/#comments Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:32:05 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=130800 With the number of cellular connections nearing the number of people on the planet, the fast-growing cellphone industry could hit a wall if it doesn’t convince people to get more than one wirelessly connected device.

So will things really level off?

“We definitely don’t think that’s the case,” said Mike O’Hara, head of marketing for GMSA, a cellphone industry trade group. Rather, O’Hara said, recent research suggests that the industry will go from six billion connections today to more than 12 billion by 2020.

Revenue for the industry could grow to $1.2 trillion, according to a study done by Machina Research for GSMA.

“That’s a significant growth for our industry,” O’Hara said.

GSMA, which puts on the annual Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, announced its study results in San Diego, just as rival U.S.-based CTIA was kicking off its fall trade show. The event includes a panel with AT&T emerging devices head Glenn Lurie and Qualcomm Senior VP Bill Davidson.

Lurie said we are just starting to understand how big this market is going to be. “We’re really just scratching the surface,” he said, reading from his iPad — one of the most popular of his company’s connected devices. “That ‘next big thing’ is this.”

Qualcomm’s Davidson said he remembers his days at Bell Atlantic, carrying around a wooden prototype of a Sierra Wireless modem several years back, knowing that was going to be the future of the cellphone industry. That said, things haven’t progressed exactly as the industry expected. Early on, it was anticipated that business would be the primary driver of mobile data use.

“It’s clearly been driven by the consumer,” Davidson said.

Lurie noted that AT&T, which started its emerging devices business three years ago, has had to change the way it does business, such as coming up with more flexible business models, rather than just monthly pricing and two-year contracts. A couple of years ago, the cost of a wireless module was a big hurdle. Now, he said, that is not necessarily the case.

The key, he said, is to make such products and their pricing simple.

“If we don’t, we are going to fail,” Lurie said.

This event is still going on. Check back for updates.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111010/mobile-devices-seen-doubling-by-2020-as-non-phones-dominate-wireless-airwaves/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111004/qualcomm-promotes-altman-to-vice-chairman-names-mollenkopf-as-coo/ http://allthingsd.com/20111004/qualcomm-promotes-altman-to-vice-chairman-names-mollenkopf-as-coo/#comments Tue, 04 Oct 2011 11:46:55 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=128004 Wireless chipmaker Qualcomm announced that Steve Altman will become vice chairman, Steve Mollenkopf has been promoted to president and chief operating officer, and Derek Aberle has been promoted to executive vice president and group president. The changes will be effective Nov. 12. As COO, Mollenkopf will oversee Qualcomm’s divisions and continue in his role as president of its CDMA Technologies unit.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111004/qualcomm-promotes-altman-to-vice-chairman-names-mollenkopf-as-coo/feed/ 0