Amid criticism, Qualcomm moves forward with BREW, new products

After two weeks of trading blows with GSM vendors over intellectual properties, Qualcomm today returned to business as usual, announcing a slew of new product initiatives and a key win for its BREW platform in the GSM community.

Qualcomm signaled its plans to branch out into the microprocessor space, announcing it “Scorpion.” Its Internet Services division also revealed it has found its first GSM customer, U.K. provider O2, for its BREW user interface, uiOne, the client software Qualcomm developed after its acquisition of UK software firm Flextronics last year.

But the controversy over Qualcomm’s patent disputes didn’t die down completely today, as Nokia responded to a lawsuit the former company filed last week in federal court, alleging Nokia infringed on several patents relating the GPRS and EDGE technology. The basis of Qualcomm’s lawsuit is that key innovations from its CDMA technology portfolio were used in developing the two GSM data technologies, and by developing GPRS and EDGE products Nokia is necessarily using Qualcomm intellectual property. Nokia conceded as much in a statement this morning, but said Qualcomm has not offered any terms under to which to license the technology. In fact, Nokia said, Qualcomm has not even entered into negotiations with the Finnish wireless vendor.

Nokia is one of six UMTS chipset makers that has filed a complaint with the European Commission about what it claims are Qualcomm’s attempts to use its strong Wideband CDMA patent portfolio to lock down the 3G market. As UMTS handset continue to rise, Qualcomm’s royalty revenues are tilting more and more to WCDMA, which the GSM consortium attributed to unfair licensing practices from the vendor, a charge Qualcomm vigorously denies.

While Qualcomm’s success in its chipset and licensing groups continues to grow in Europe and the GSM community, its Internet services division has had trouble gaining the same traction. Qualcomm has yet to land its first GSM BREW customer, but today it took a significant step toward gaining that win. While O2 isn’t licensing the BREW content management and delivery platform, it’s licensing the handset user interface software, which Qualcomm has integrated heavily with the platform. The customizable client allows carriers to develop their own unique portals and user interface. O2 will be using the client to access its own managed content store, but in recent interviews Qualcomm said it expects to make gradual headway with European GSM operators, allowing them to be comfortable with the components of BREW before fully embracing it.

On the chipset side, Qualcomm’s new Scorpion processor is a 1 GHz processor based on ARM’s version 7 instruction set, and is designed to integrated directly into Qualcomm’s Mobile Station Modem (MSM) chipsets. Previously Qualcomm licensed its microprocessor technology directly from ARM, but an expanded agreement with the digital technology provider gives Qualcomm access the core ARM architecture, allowing it to build its own processors directly into its radio modem chipsets.

Qualcomm said it has designed the processor to address specific needs unique to wireless networks, making the new chip eight times as fast as its current MSM chips. Qualcomm hasn’t announced which of its MSM line into which it will incorporate Scorpion, but it said it would begin to ship MSM chips with the solution embedded in 2006.