Qualcomm mimics Nokia says Ovum

QUALCOMM'S recently announced fiscal Q1 results have left the company in an interesting situation. In some ways its re-organisation mimics Nokia. In others, its "stellar" chip division has yet to crack crucial emerging markets.

The best performing part of the group -QCT, Qualcomm's chipset division - has announced shipments up 34 per cent for the year to 79 million units. Qualcomm now owns 80 per cent of the user base in Japan but has yet licensed its 3G products in China and India.

According to Martin Garner, mobile director with analyst firm Ovum, 2007 saw the arrival of high-speed 3G (HSDPA) "leaving Qualcomm in a happy place. Interestingly, though, Qualcomm said that WCDMA [demand] was a bit weaker than anticipated in Q4 2007 spread across a number of markets, but that it is optimistic about demand in 2008."

The company took the opportunity to announce that it was creating a new services organisation, run by Len Lauer. This brings together six areas of focus. These are: - commerce; content delivery; broadcast; connectivity (Including embedded chipsets); location + presence; and advertising.

The move looks like an attempt to mimic Nokia, except Garner says, that Qualcom is focussed on business customers not the consumer like Nokia's services division (Ovi).

"It is not intending to develop a consumer brand, except in one area - it believes its TV service MediaFLO needs consumer recognition, so will be trying to build FLO-TV as a brand," Garner commented.

Garner didn't comment on the ongoing battles between Qualcomm and Broadcom. The latter announced healthy net revenues which were up 8.1 per cent in Q4 2007 but it didn't mention unit sales.

Scott McGregor, Broadcom's CEO said," 2007 ended strongly as Broadcom generated record revenue for the fourth quarter and the full year, driven by the ramp in new product cycles occurring in the Bluetooth, wireless LAN and digital TV markets."

It will be interesting to see which of the pair wins the legal battles in 2008. µ