ATI and Qualcomm join in mobile ecstasy

THERE ARE MUCH more mobile phones in each house than computers. Not many houses have more than one PC but I can think of a few - the Fudzilla residence and Inquirer central in Harrow are good examples.

Just few days earlier in Londonium we heard that ATI and Qualcomm joined the rush to conquer the mobile market. Qualcomm showed us where mobile phones are going and I can tell that if you don't like 3D you won't like the near future of mobile phones.

Normal non techy people have more mobile phones than PCs. That's what Qualcomm realised quite some while ago and that's what ATI learned in the last few quarters.

Qualcomm told us that all of its customers are requesting 3D interfaces, 3D icons, 3D games and even 3D ring tones on their mobile phones. 3D ring phone means that your phone plays 3D animation when it rings, we understood.

We saw first 3D game steps on mobile phones and we saw bowling games and Collin McCray rally and it looks small and funny but it what customers demans in present or near future.

Qualcomm offers quite few solutions for mobile phones now but if you want Qualcomm chip and 3D support you will have to get ATI chip separately. Qualcomm made its chips compliant to its partner ATI 3D / multimedia chips. Both companies are working on their first unified chip and they will continue to do 2D and 3D chip as one chip solution. This should happen at beginning of 2005 we understood.

This is just first step and ATI / Qualcomm roadmap looks impressive they showed us some plans till 2007 where you can expect your media chip with 32 to crazy 64 MB of graphic memory on mobile phone chip.

Nvidia might be in trouble to fight ATI on this market as Qualcomm is very high ranked player but we have to wait and see what is going to happen in Nvidia vs. ATI mobile phone chip wars.

Mobile phone future looks 3Dchip inside to me weather you want it or not. µ