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Qualcomm to support Romania developers

21.06.2004, 00:00 40



There is a very strong community of software developers in Romania, which Qualcomm is willing to help integrate into the international community, with the US-based company also set to focus more on Europe for the implementation of its CDMA technology, Dr. Paul Jacobs, executive vice president and president of QUALCOMM Wireless and Internet Group, told Ziarul Financiar at the BREW 2004 Developers Conference in San Diego.



The conference gathered both operators and developers looking to define the future trends in the telecommunications industry and also provided participants with a preview of the new products and strategies to be revealed this year by leading wireless companies from around the world.sQ1t



"Integration" and "value added services" were the keywords used by most of the speakers at the three-day conference. As integration both lowers costs and provides higher user satisfaction, Qualcomm will continue to focus in this direction, Dr. Paul Jacobs stated.



The US-based company is helping out the Romanian developers with investments, with labs for tests, software, extensions and marketing.



"I know that the developers community in Romania is very strong and they can build applications that are very sophisticated, whereas a lot of developers are focusing on simple games and standard applications," Dr. Jacobs said. "Those that come and integrate will be in a very strong position," the official added. "In terms of building a community of developers, we already have a number of European developers, we've done European developers conferences and active events, we are trying to get more operators online and we feel that having Zapp start was a huge step," Dr. Jacobs maintained.



Qualcomm, world leader in developing and implementing wireless solutions based on the CDMA technology, is trying to support Zapp both from the technical and the financial side, in order to "help the CDMA operator through the early issues," Dr. Paul Jacobs said.



Also, Qualcomm aims to prove that the CDMA technology can be used at acceptable costs, a key issue in cost-sensitive markets such as Southeastern Europe. "We basically give everything for free upfront and only make money if the operators make money", Dr. Jacobs told Ziarul Financiar, outlining the success of the CDMA services on other cost driven markets such as Latin America, India and some tiers of China.



Dr. Paul Jacobs admits that CDMA will do better in Romania, once there be more handsets available for the users to choose from. "We are planning to help the handset situation in Romania by integration into the chipsets for the 450 capability and we will also help to drive the market outside, to Russia, Portugal and even India, because, as the market expands, the choice of handsets will also expand," he told Ziarul Financiar.



Qualcomm is also focusing on the MediaFLO technology, which will enable users to watch TV on their mobile phone screens.



Dr. Jacobs also spotlighted the significant growth that the BREW solution has experienced in the last year, noting consumers worldwide have now downloaded more than 130 million applications compared to the 30 million downloads reported at last year's conference. The number of BREW-enabled devices in the market has grown to more than 30 million versus eight million last year at this time. Almost tripling the number of commercial device models available last year, there are more than 140 commercial device models available today.
raluca.badea@zf.ro



 

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