Qualcomm lines up new chip platform

SAN DIEGO: Qualcomm Inc.has announced a new development platform for their chip line. The announcement came at the Uplinq 2010 Conference in San Diego, and the revelation is expected to make an impact in the mobile internet device (MID) field.

The new chip line, called Snapdragon, has been in the works for some time now, and competitors like Intel, NVIDIA, Freescale and others are already reportedly working on bringing out their own devices in response. The MID market is still in the early stages of development, and it is too early to tell who will be the leader in the field. Despite the announcement of the Snapdragon, product delays at Qualcomm are expected to hamper their making significant inroads in the chip space immediately.

Reports say that almost 140 devices are being developed based on the Snapdragon, so Qualcomm is definitely getting an early foothold in the field. Qualcomm displayed a range of devices that would work be powered by the Snapdragon chip recently. These include Acer’s Liquid and neoTouch smartphones, Dell’s Streak 5-inch Android tablet, HP’s Compaq Airlife 100 smart book, HTC’s Droid Incredible and Nexus One smartphones, Huawei’s S7 tablet and Lenovo’s LePhone smartphone.

Although it is presently not clear if these products will actually take off, Qualcomm seems to be doing everything to ensure that things go as planned. Sources say that the company has a new development platform in place to aid OEMs, which is expected to accelerate the development of systems based on the Snapdragon.