The positive buzz about Nokia’s Lumia 900 is sounding very sweet to Qualcomm, maker of the 1.4-GHz Snapdragon APQ8055 chipset that powers the smartphone. After several years with no business from the world’s largest mobile phone maker, Qualcomm appears to have repaired its relationship with Nokia just in time, as analysts are predicting a turnaround for the Finnish company based on its Lumia line of Windows-based phones. “One of the hottest new products unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show was the Lumia 900, a Windows Phone-based smartphone sporting a flashy set of features that makes it competitive with the best alternatives offered by the Android camp,” said Wayne Lam, senior analyst for wireless communications at IHS. “This hot product represents Nokia’s first step to reclaim its market share.” Meanwhile Morgan Stanley is predicting that Nokia could sell up to 37 million Windows phones this year.
“The Nokia business is a big opportunity for Qualcomm,” says microprocessor analyst Linley Gwennap. “They have kind of tapped out with a lot of the other big guys in the market.” Qualcomm supplies the baseband processor for Apple’s iPhone 4S, as well as processors for several Samsung and HTC smartphones.
Gwennap thinks the second half of 2012 could be especially positive for Qualcomm as the company brings to market its next generation Krait architecture (named for a highly venomous Asian snake.) Snapdragon S4 will be Qualcomm’s first Krait SoC (system on a chip.) It will be the first mobile processor made with 28 nanometer processor technnology, which allows for reduced size and power consumption. “This will bump up (smartphone) performance, and differentiate Qualcomm,” Gwennap says. “They have about a 6-month lead time (over competitors) with this technology.”
