Qualcomm pounces on 700 MHz opportunity

In anticipation of possible industry-changing outcomes in next year’s 700 MHz spectrum auction, Qualcomm Inc. announced its CDMA2000 and W-CDMA product lines would be available for devices that run on the highly-anticipated spectrum band.
Qualcomm said that a new chip it developed would support the 700 MHz band and all other bands operating in the United States market; the product will “sample”-or be available to handset vendors and network operators for testing-in mid-2008, for devices expected on the market the following year.
Qualcomm’s product hype comes on the heels of good and bad news for the chip maker and intellectual property licensor. While the company has recently won a couple of modest victories in various legal battles, some long-term business opportunities appear to have come into question.
The European Commission is favoring a mobile TV standard-DVB-H-over Qualcomm’s MediaFLO technology. And, separately, Verizon Wireless said it would pursue Long Term Evolution (LTE) as a next-generation standard rather than Qualcomm’s Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB) next-gen offering.
While Verizon’s decision was initially seen as a blow to Qualcomm’s future business, the company holds patents in LTE and the deployment of the technology is sufficiently distant that the impact remains undetermined.