Qualcomm takes aim at the cheap smartphone

Instead of making feature phones smarter, Qualcomm is trying to make smartphones cheaper. The company announced on Thursday its new smartphone chipset targeting the sub-$150 handset, a price point usually reserved for the mid-tier feature phone.

The Mobile Station Modem (MSM) 7227 replaces the MSM7xxx series, which has been its primary silicon platform for smartphones since 2003. The high-speed packet downlink/uplink access (HSDPA/HSUPA) chipset features a 600 MHz applications processor, a 320 MHz digital signal processor and a 400 MHz modem processor as well as hardware-accelerated graphics, integrated Bluetooth and GPS, and support for high-resolution digital photography and video. Qualcomm said the platform is designed to support all of the leading mobile operating systems, including Symbian S60, Android and Windows Mobile as well as Qualcomm’s own BREW implementations.

“We see a significant opportunity to bring the best features of today’s smartphones to the mass-market segment,” Alex Katouzian, vice president of product management, said in a statement. The cheap smartphone is one of the holy grails of the wireless industry, seen as means of bringing high-revenue data plans to everyday consumers. Typical smartphones, however, can range between $200 and $600, depending on the subsidy offered. The now-ubiquitous Apple iPhone costs between $200 and $300 but is highly subsidized through AT&T’s two-year contract and hefty $30-a-month data plan. At the GSM Association’s Mobile World Congress next week, vendors are expected to release the latest batch of smart devices, one of the most anticipated being a Garmin navigation phone, but few of them will be inexpensive.

A smartphone retail-priced at $150, though, could wind up in a consumer’s hands for less than $50 or even free with a contract subsidy. Qualcomm said it is already sampling the MSM7227, and the first phones embedded with the chipset will be released later this year.

It’s been a busy week for Qualcomm in silicon. The chip vendor announced earlier this week that it has integrated near field communications support into some of its MSM lines and is working with Inside Contactless to integrate its NFC chip into reference designs for both CDMA and UMTS handsets. Qualcomm also announced additions to its HSPA+ portfolio, including chips that will support dual-carrier configurations. In upcoming HSPA+ standards, operators will be able to stack 3G channels, allowing customers with capacity-hungry devices like modem cards to access two 3G channels simultaneously effectively doubling available bandwidth.

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