Qualcomm has completed its acquisition of Alphawave IP Group for a reported $2.4 billion, as the communications technology giant continues its expansion into the data center.

First announced back in June 2025, the transaction has been wrapped up around one financial quarter ahead of schedule.

Dual-headquartered in London and Toronto, Alphawave IP Group – operationally known as Alphawave Semi – specializes in high-speed wired connectivity, offering custom silicon, connectivity products, and chiplets geared towards high performance and power efficiency.

Qualcomm said the move will create a “leading player” in AI compute and connectivity solutions, as well as provide key assets for its expansion into data centers.

“Alphawave Semi’s expertise in high-speed connectivity technologies complements our Qualcomm Oryon CPU and Hexagon NPU processors,” explained Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm’s president and CEO, in an announcement.

“Qualcomm delivers high-performance, energy-efficient compute and AI solutions, and the addition of Alphawave’s technologies will strengthen our platforms and optimize performance for next-generation AI data centers.”

Aphawave Semi’s high-speed connectivity solutions are designed to drive data transfer improvements across a range of environments and technologies, including data centers, AI, 5G, networking, and storage.

The firm’s portfolio spans connectivity IP, chiplets, and advanced connectivity products built around high-performance serializer/deserializer (SerDes), controllers, and UCIe.

These offerings are designed to support next-gen electrical and optical interconnects for higher bandwidth and lower latency in hyperscale and AI systems, while Alphawave Semi’s custom silicon design services help customers accelerate development of enhanced chips for their infrastructure.

As part of the company’s acquisition, Alphawave’s CEO and co-founder, Tony Pialis, will now lead the Qualcomm data center business.

“Joining Qualcomm marks an exciting new chapter for Alphawave Semi,” Pialis commented. “We’re ready to bring our leadership in high-speed connectivity and custom silicon to help shape the future of data center innovation.”

The news follows Qualcomm’s acquisition of Ventana Micro Systems earlier this month – a deal the company said will bolster its RISC-V CPU development capabilities and drive fresh Oryon advancements.

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A GPU memory vulnerability dubbed ‘LeftoverLocals’ could expose LLM responses to hackers through leftover local memory, researchers have warned. 

Apple, Qualcomm, AMD, and Imagination are among the big name GPU vendors named as vulnerable according to research posted on the Trail of Bits blog. The GPUs have all been vulnerable to varying extents from as far back as September 2023, when researchers first began their investigation.

Researchers were able to build a proof of concept (PoC) of the potential attack, citing an attached video in which they listen in to another user’s interactive LLM session by recovering a GPUs local memory.

From their tests, the researchers concluded that ‘LeftoverLocals’ could leak around 5.5mb per GPU invocation on an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, enough data to reconstruct an LLM with worryingly high precision.

With GPUs used extensively to support the high performance requirements of AI inferencing, this news is likely to raise serious concerns among enterprise AI users.

Eleanor Watson, IEEE member and AI ethics engineer at Singularity university, told ITPro that although this particular vulnerability would require physical access to a GPU, the research highlights serious data protection risks.

“Whilst this particular type of exploit requires direct access to the GPU and its memory, it’s indicative of the challenges of keeping our interactions with AI systems private,” she said.

“I expect that further vulnerabilities will be uncovered which are broadly applicable to a wide range of LLM systems, leading to a widespread doxxing of interactions and generations, and associated embarrassment,” she added.

Vendors have acted swiftly on GPU memory vulnerability  

To defend against the vulnerability, GPUs need a built in system to clear local memory between kernel calls. Some GPU vendors, including Nvidia and Intel, are already doing this, whereas others need to keep pace. 

In response to the news of ‘LeftoverLocals’, AMD stated plans to create a new mode that “prevents processes from running in parallel on the GPU and clears local memory between processes on supported products”, with an expected rollout of said mode by March 2024.

“This mode would be designed to be set by an administrator and not enabled by default,” the firm said in an advisory. “Supporting documentation for the new mode, along with details of how to update AMD products, will be provided in a future update to this security notice.”

Apple responded to Trail of Bits but did not issue specific details of their patch, while Qualcomm issued a partial fix and Imagination a full patch in December.

A failure to patch this vulnerability could see attackers targeting a variety of GPU applications and LLM sessions, including those within privacy-sensitive domains.

Open source LLMs, however, are still the main target. Despite their ability to be rigorously audited, their reliance on closed-source GPUs means they are particularly susceptible to this attack.

“A lot of security hardening will need to be done on AI systems to make them more resistant to these kinds of vulnerabilities”, Watson said.

“This is a necessary component of the ongoing professionalization of AI, along with mastering challenges such as confabulation/hallucination in models”, she added.

Qualcomm has predicted a muted fourth quarter, citing declining handset sales and tough macroeconomic conditions, while laying the groundwork for job cuts in 2024.

The firm estimated Q4 revenue of $8.1 billion to $8.9 billion, with Android handset revenue expected to remain steady and its IoT and automotive revenue to decline.

Qualcomm also told investors that it expects to receive no revenues from Huawei in Q4, as it lacks a 5G license for shipping to the Chinese firm.

The predictions were made against the backdrop of its Q3 results, in which the firm’s net income dropped 52% year-on-year to $1.8 billion (£1.42 billion).

Handset chip revenue fell 25% across the period, to $5.26 billion. Business uptake of Internet of Things (IoT) devices bolstered Qualcomm’s IoT division to bring in $1.49 billion, a 24% year-on-year drop but 7% increase on Q2.

Qualcomm has engaged in an extensive cost-reduction plan and said it remains on course to exceed its goal of 5% reduction relative to the end of FY22. The company has left the door open to more extensive cuts including workforce restructuring in the coming quarter.

“While we are in the process of developing our plans, we currently expect these actions to consist largely of workforce reductions, and in connection with any such actions we would expect to incur significant additional restructuring charges, a substantial portion of which we expect to incur in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023,” the company wrote in a securities filing.

“We currently anticipate these additional actions to be substantially completed in the first half of fiscal 2024.”

Qualcomm has pinned its hopes for sequential revenue growth in Q4 on the seasonal performance of Qualcomm Technology Licensing (QTL), the firm’s segment that grants Qualcomm patent rights to manufacturers, and purchases by modem-only handset customers.

Though the firm’s automotive segment performed better than others in Q3, with revenue of $434 million - up 13% year-on-year, it is expected to sequentially decline across Q4 in line with seasonal trends.

“Until we see sustained signs of improving fundamentals, our operating framework does not assume an immediate recovery,” said Akash Palkhiwala, CFO at Qualcomm.

“Given our commitment to operating discipline, we will proactively implement additional cost actions in the first half of fiscal '24. This will be incremental to the reductions we have successfully completed in fiscal '23.”

In June, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Qualcomm had cut 415 employees from its San Diego HQ. The firm is currently estimated to have over 51,000 employees worldwide, and numbers for expected cuts have not been announced.

US banking company Citi has announced its intention to transition the majority of its 300,000-strong global workforce to Snapdragon-powered mobile computing devices, citing battery life and AI features as key differentiators.

Speaking onstage at Qualcomm’s annual Snapdragon Summit event in Hawaii, the company announced that it would be moving more than 70% of its users over to Windows on Snapdragon products such as the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s.

“We heard from our employees about how AI made video calls more engaging by isolating human voices from distracting noises, blurring the background, and really addressing the needs of typical hybrid work environments,” said Patrick Javier, head of end-user computing for Citi. “With Snapdragon's dedicated AI engine optimising these processes, employees rave about how this enhances productivity without sacrificing performance or battery life.”

“Snapdragon also allows offloading of many other critical workloads required by bank IT, such as security, encryption, and communication onto specialised engines that sit directly on the SoC, again freeing precious CPU resources for the user or to further extend battery life.”

Based on the company’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 platform, the X13s is a 13in device with a 1.6kg weight and a thickness of 13.4mm, including 5G and Wi-Fi 6 support, and up to 32GB of RAM. Lenovo also claims the device offers up to 28 hours of battery life, and Javier highlighted this as a key consideration in Citi’s hardware refresh process.

“At Citi, we are committed to sustainable progress and to advancing solutions that address climate change and support our net zero strategy. With Snapdragon-powered PCs, we found that for office productivity and collaboration workloads typical of our employees, that battery can last a full day on one charge,” Javier said.

“Across our global employee base, that means the elimination of thousands of metric tonnes of carbon and accelerating our transition to the low carbon economy.”

Partnerships have been a strong focus of this year’s event for Qualcomm’s Windows on Snapdragon division; the Summit highlighted the deepening of its relationship with Microsoft through bringing additional AI enhancements such as noise cancellation and background blur for video calls to Windows 11, and the launch of the new Microsoft Surface Pro 9 5G powered by the co-developed Microsoft SQ 3 Snapdragon processor.

In addition, the company also announced an expanded partnership with Adobe. The software company will continue to create native versions of its Creative Cloud programs for Windows on Snapdragon, with the latest additions being Adobe Fresco and Adobe Acrobat, joining its Photoshop and Lightroom products.

Qualcomm has today announced its first dedicated platform designed for augmented reality (AR) smart glasses, promising greater power efficiency, improved AI support and smaller device footprints.

The chip manufacturer unveiled the new AR2 Gen 1 system on a chip (SoC) at its annual Snapdragon Summit event in Hawaii. Qualcomm said it's currently working with more than ten OEM partners on devices powered by the new platform, including Lenovo, Oppo, Xiaomi, and more.

The platform is built specifically to support premium AR smart glasses, with another platform catering to more affordable mid-range devices to follow in future.

“Snapdragon AR2 is an extension of our XR portfolio and the first of a series of platforms engineered to meet the specific needs of AR glasses,” said Hugo Swart, Qualcomm’s vice-president and general manager of XR and metaverse. “It delivers groundbreaking technology designed to revolutionise AR glasses, and shake the metaverse. With it, OEMs can create thinner, sleeker, more comfortable and more immersive glasses users will love.”

Qualcomm’s previous foray into virtual and augmented reality technologies, the XR2 platform, took around a year for the first OEM devices to start hitting the market, and Swart expects this newest offering to follow the same cadence.

“Let's look into history: we announced XR2 Gen 1 in this event, so November, I think it was 2019; the first devices start to come out at the end of 2020. And then more devices came in 2021 and even ‘22,” he told IT Pro. “Based on where we are in discussions, my feeling is that we can get the same rough timeline. So second half of next year, I think we can start seeing these devices.”

The platform will support up to nine simultaneously-running cameras for improved contextual understanding, a dedicated hardware acceleration engine for better motion and position tracking, and an AI accelerator to reduce latency for six degrees of freedom or hand-tracking controls.

There’s also a reprojection engine, which creates smoother transitions when images move between offscreen and onscreen.

One of the biggest problems affecting the adoption of smart glasses is that current technology means the glasses themselves typically have to be large and bulky to accommodate the necessary components.

Qualcomm has attempted to address this with the new AR2 by combining a physically smaller PCB - 40% reduced, compared to the reference design of its Snapdragon XR2 AR platform - with a 45% reduction in the amount of wiring required.

It also uses a distributed architecture, enabled by a multi-chip design and twin AR processors, which allows components to be spaced out more evenly across the arms and bridge of a pair of glasses without affecting latency.

The AR2 is designed for tethered solutions, meaning data which is sensitive to latency can be processed directly on the device, and more complex data processing requirements can be offloaded to a paired device such as a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered smartphone or a Windows PC running a Snapdragon processor.

The system is built on a 4nm process and includes Qualcomm’s dedicated FastConnect 7800 connectivity chip featuring Wi-Fi 7 support and less than 2ms latency.

Power consumption has also been improved thanks to enhanced eye-tracking via the platform’s AI co-processor, which is used to prioritise workloads based on what the user is looking at, scaling back processing in other areas to save power.

Qualcomm claimed that the AR2 Gen1 platform offers a 2.5x better performance for AI operations, while consuming 50% less power than the XR2 design, all with less than 1W power consumption.

The AR2 Gen 1, along with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, is optimised for use with Snapdragon Spaces, Qualcomm’s extended reality (XR) development platform. Pokémon Go developers Niantic also announced that it has partnered with Qualcomm to bring its Lightship Visual Positioning System technology to Snapdragon Spaces in 2023, and Adobe also announced at the event that its 3D content creation tools such as Adobe Aero will begin using the Snapdragon Spaces APIs.

“We strongly believe that Snapdragon Spaces is the industry-leading platform for developers to offer incredible, amazing, immersive XR experiences,” said Govind Balakrishnan, SVP Creative Cloud products and services at Adobe.

“To this end, we are going to start by bringing Adobe's 3D and immersive authoring experiences to smartphones, mobile PCs, and XR devices. And we plan to bring the Universal Scene Description open source technology to Snapdragon hardware devices.”

Qualcomm has officially unveiled the next iteration of its Snapdragon mobile CPU platform, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, promising a range of improvements with a particular focus on AI technologies.

Launched at the company’s annual Snapdragon Summit event in Hawaii, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is ‘purpose built’ for AI, with an improved ‘AI Engine’ powered by an updated Qualcomm Hexagon processor.

Qualcomm said the chip has seen major architectural changes, such as the addition of a Tensor accelerator chip which is double the size of the previous generation, resulting in more than 4x faster AI performance and a 60% performance-per-watt improvement in power efficiency.

“We designed the [Snapdragon] 8 Gen 2 with one key technology: artificial intelligence,” said the company’s senior vice-president of engineering, Chris Patrick. “Qualcomm is the AI inferencing leader at the edge."

"Today we've already powered billions of edge devices across the world. We built on that expertise to make our new flagship an engine of innovation, a true AI marvel. We've integrated AI across the entire platform to usher in the new era of AI accelerated experiences.”

The new platform also includes an updated Qualcomm Kryo CPU with four performance cores and three efficiency cores, delivering up to speeds of 2.8GHz and 2GHz respectively.

A 3.2GHz prime core based on Arm’s Cortex-X3 technology also features, as does a new Adreno GPU with 25% improvements for both efficiency and speed. The company said this configuration offers up to 30% faster overall performance and up to 40% better power efficiency for longer battery life.

Another new feature introduced with this platform is the ‘Cognitive ISP’ - a physical link between the Qualcomm Spectra ISP and the Hexagon AI processor which uses neural network technology to automatically perform semantic segmentation.

This means that the camera itself can contextually recognise elements within a photo such as faces, hair, clothes and skies - and perform real-time adjustments to each one individually.

In addition to advanced on-device image processing, the AI functions supported by the new platform include multi-language translation, AI autofocus, and the world’s first support for INT4 on mobile, which essentially allows AI models to be trained on four-bit integers, rather than 32-bit floating-point integers.

According to Ziad Asghar, VP product management for mobile at Qualcomm, what this means is that more neural models will be able to run concurrently on the device.

“What we are providing is what we call Qualcomm AI Studio, which is a set of tools that allow you to take a model and actually shrink it down to integer four. And by doing that, now, instead of having to process 32 bits, you've got to process four bits only. That means you've got to do a lot less work, which means you've got to spend a lot less power.

“We are the first in the industry to do this,” Asghar said. “So it brings a huge advantage; a lot more AI is going to be able to fit in the same amount of processing, which is very, very powerful for us.”

Condensing 32-bit models to INT4 reduces the power consumption by a factor of 64, he said, and the company’s introduction of micro-tile inferencing also minimises the number of reads and writes for improved performance and longevity.

The company is aiming to attract more AI developers to the platform by unlocking these features, and is releasing a new developer kit to make it easier for them to start creating compatible machine learning applications.

The Qualcomm Innovators Development Kit will initially be made available to universities and research institutions before being rolled out on a wider basis in the future.

Qualcomm has also used these capabilities to add functionality to its Sensing Hub which uses dual AI processors to provide real-time contextual awareness by combining input from a range of sensors across the device, including cameras, microphones, gyroscopes, and more.

This will enable OEMs and developers to introduce a range of additional features, with some theoretical examples including the ability to identify the sound of glass breaking during the night to alert the user, and the ability to detect the orientation of the user’s face while lying down and prevent unwanted screen rotation.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 supports dual-active dual-SIM 5G, with a dedicated 5G AI processor to deliver better speed and stability throughput in both mmWave and sub-6GHz connections.

It’s also the first commercial chipset to support Wi-Fi 7 connectivity via the integrated FastConnect 7800 chip, taking advantage of the increasing number of Wi-Fi 7 routers coming to market. Qualcomm is boasting up to 5.8Gb/sec speeds, and less than 2ms latency, with cloud gaming and 4K streaming touted as key use cases.

Backing this up is support for the HDR10+ Adaptive standard, which compensates for changing lighting conditions when viewing HDR content, and OLED ageing compensation to keep OLED displays such as those found on the Samsung Galaxy S22 looking their best after prolonged use.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is also the first mobile chipset to support Unreal Engine 5’s Metahumans framework for creating and using hyper-realistic characters in games, and offers real-time hardware accelerated ray tracing, as well as 4K video playback at 60Hz.

Finally, Qualcomm’s AI tools are also being used to increase device security, including making facial unlock more secure by capturing data from facial unlock attempts, and routing it securely through to the digital signal processor (DSP) to perform detailed analysis on facial muscle movements and skin colour changes to ensure authenticity.

The new platform will be used in devices from major smartphone manufacturers including Oppo, OnePlus, Sony, and more, with the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 smartphones expected to hit shelves by the end of this year.

US chipmaker Qualcomm is seeking to invest in Arm as part of a consortium.

Arm’s owner SoftBank is hoping to list Arm next year after Nvidia’s $66 billion acquisition of the company fell through earlier this year.

Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm’s chief executive, told the Financial Times that the company is an interested party in investing, underlining that Arm is a very important asset given its crucial role in the global technology sector.

Amon emphasised that Qualcomm could join up with other chipmakers to buy Arm if the consortium making the purchase was big enough.

“You’d need to have many companies participating so they have a net effect that Arm is independent,” said Amon.

Qualcomm had opposed Nvidia’s proposed acquisition of Arm, saying that it made no sense for one chipmaker to take control of a company that was of such fundamental value to the entire sector.

“Arm has won everywhere because of the collective investment of the entire ecosystem, from companies like Apple and Qualcomm and many others, and that’s because it was an independent, open architecture that everybody could invest in,” said Amon, talking about the period before SoftBank purchased the company.

Qualcomm hasn’t spoken to SoftBank about the potential investment just yet, revealed Amon, He said the Japanese group had been prioritising resolving a dispute at Arm’s joint venture in China, where its CEO had refused to step down.

Amon’s proposition could provide additional momentum to the idea of a group of chipmakers becoming investors in Arm. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger suggested the company could support a move earlier this year.

In March, SK Hynix was also reportedly reviewing plans to acquire Arm. Park Jung-ho, vice chairman and CEO of the company, said it was considering forming a consortium, along with strategic partners, to jointly acquire the chipmaker. He emphasised that he doesn’t think Arm can be bought by one organisation.

Arm strikes licensing deals with partners, no matter their size or where they are based. This has led to its intellectual property being used in the majority of chips sold globally. In August 2021, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) raised concerns around Nvidia’s acquisition of Arm as the merged business would have the capacity and incentive to restrict access to Arm’s intellectual property. This is used by companies that rival Nvidia to produce semiconductor chips, in competition with the US giant.

This was echoed by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in December 2021. It said the deal would "stifle" competition for multiple technologies because Arm is a "critical input" that fosters competition between Nvidia and its rivals. It said this kind of acquisition would give Nvidia a way to undermine other companies.

Why is Arm so important?

Consumption of semiconductor chips is growing rapidly, in the EU alone the consumption of leading edge chips is forecast to grow exponentially by 15% compound annual growth rate between 2020-2030, Dieter Gerdemann, partner at Kearney, told IT Pro.

"It should come as no surprise that due to the dominance of Arm, in the supply of chips for smart phones, with 90% of devices using the chip and IoT applications, and in fields such as data centres that Qualcomm has chosen to take an interest," he added.

Gerdemann said that Nvidia's attempted takeover of Arm was met with critique across the semiconductor sector which argued for the independence of the ARM eco-system and the benefits ARM’s status as a chip powerhouse in Europe brings. 75% of leading-edge chips are currently being produced in East Asia and, following the EU Chips Act, the focus has never been more on Europe.

“The idea that Qualcomm might now invest in Arm, after arguing against the Nvidia takeover, is an interesting one," he said. "The consortium they indicate to invest through will certainly need to meet stringent requirements for openness and transparency in order to gain acceptance of the global semiconductor community.

"However, we are convinced of the benefits of a publicly listed Arm entity, as the forces of the free market will ensure Arm stays competitive and continues to be the innovation powerhouse that it is today – to the benefit of the semiconductor ecosystem and Europe as a semiconductor design powerhouse.”

Qualcomm and MediaTek, two of the biggest chipmakers in the world, have been found to have used vulnerable technology in smartphones that could have led to privacy violations of Android users.

Check Point Research (CPR) discovered a number of vulnerabilities in the Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), a component responsible for compressing audio data, that could have led to users’ calls and stored images being accessed by cyber attackers.

The researchers believe that more than two-thirds of the world’s Android smartphones were vulnerable to the attacks at some point.

The vulnerabilities were found in the ALAC code which Apple made open source in 2011; the ALAC has since been installed in a wide variety of non-Apple audio playback devices and programmes - not just Android smartphones, CPR said.

Apple has since updated the code since it went open source, but the code in question had not been updated since 2011 and both Qualcomm and MediaTek ported the vulnerable ALAC code into their audio decoders.

Attackers could have used the vulnerabilities to conduct a remote code execution (RCE) attack on smartphones by sending victims a malformed audio file, the researchers said, but will not unveil full details of how the vulnerabilities can be exploited until they are presented at the CanSecWest conference in May.

“We've discovered a set of vulnerabilities that could be used for remote execution and privilege escalation on two-thirds of the world's mobile devices,” said Slava Makkaveev, reverse engineering and security research, at CPR. “The vulnerabilities were easily exploitable. A threat actor could have sent a song (media file) and when played by a potential victim, it could have injected code in the privileged media service.

“The threat actor could have seen what the mobile phone user sees on their phone. In our proof of concept, we were able to steal the phone's camera stream. What is the most sensitive information on your phone? I think it's your media: audio and videos. An attacker could have stolen that through these vulnerabilities. The vulnerable decoder is based on the code shared by Apple 11 years ago.”

MediaTek tracks both vulnerabilities as CVE-2021-0674 and CVE-2021-0675, scoring 5.5 and 7.8 out of ten on the CVSSv3 threat severity scale, and were patched by the company in December 2021.

Qualcomm tracks the security vulnerability as CVE-2021-30351, scoring 9.8, a critical rating, and affected a score of Snapdragon products. Qualcomm patched the issue in December 2021 and CPR waited until this week to publish details to allow users time to patch.

CPR recommends all Android users regularly patch their phones to the latest version that Google issues on a monthly basis.

Microsoft and Qualcomm are set to collaborate to expand and accelerate the adoption of augmented reality (AR) for the metaverse in both the consumer and enterprise sector, including developing custom AR chips.

The companies stated they were believers in the metaverse and intend to work together across several initiatives to drive the ecosystem. This includes developing custom AR chips to enable a new wave of power-efficient, lightweight AR glasses to deliver rich and immersive experiences.

Microsoft and Qualcomm also plan to integrate software like Microsoft Mesh and Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform. They hope the collaboration will create transformative experiences for the next generation of head-worn AR devices in the metaverse.

“Our goal is to inspire and empower others to collectively work to develop the metaverse future – a future that is grounded in trust and innovation,” said Rubén Caballero, corporate vice president of Mixed Reality at Microsoft.

“With services like Microsoft Mesh, we are committed to delivering the safest and most comprehensive set of capabilities to power metaverses that blend the physical and digital worlds, ultimately delivering a shared sense of presence across devices.”

Hugo Swart, vice president and general manager of extended reality (XR) at Qualcomm added that the collaboration reflects the next step in both companies’ shared commitment to XR and the metaverse. Swart said Qualcomm’s core XR strategy has always been delivering the most cutting-edge technology, purpose-built XR chipsets, and enabling the ecosystem with its software platforms and hardware reference designs.

At the start of November, Microsoft launched Mesh for Microsoft Teams, its pitch for the metaverse. It aims to make remote and hybrid meetings more immersive and is set to roll out in 2022. It is a mixed reality service that allows people in different physical locations to join collaborative and shared holographic environments within Microsoft Teams to allow for chats, virtual meetings, and the sharing of documents and more.

This came after Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s name change and its renewed focus on the metaverse. He said the metaverse would feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world to allow people to share immersive experiences, even when you can’t be together. The CEO added that it will be a more immersive social media experience, where virtual and augmented reality will take centre stage.

Qualcomm has officially launched the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, its latest Windows-focused chip that promises significant performance increases while offering better connectivity.

Built on the ARM architecture, the 8cx Gen 3 is the first 5nm chip to come to a Windows PC, with promised CPU performance boosts of 85% compared to the previous 7nm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, as well as a 60% increase to GPU performance.

The chip is also said to be more efficient on a per-watt basis with the CPU containing high-performance cores for the most demanding tasks and energy-efficient cores for lower effort processes.

Combining the two is thought to bring even better battery performance to users of the slim and light notebook market, making the chip's power draw more efficient. Qualcomm said users can get 25 hours worth of use out of a device on a single charge, depending on the device, model, and workloads involved.

Connectivity options are also more generous in the 8cx Gen 3, with support for Qualcomm's latest 5G modem for up to 10 Gbits/sec peak 5G throughput speeds for when users are out and about.

Manufacturers will be able to choose between a range of Qualcomm's 5G modems depending on what degree of mobile connectivity they want in their notebooks. They can choose between the Snapdragon X65 Modem-RF System for the top 5G speeds of up to 10 Gbits/sec or drop it down to 7.5 Gbits/sec with the Snapdragon X55 Modem-RF System.

The 8cx Gen 3 also brings with it Wi-Fi 6E for the first time to access the latest 6Ghz spectrum to reach faster speeds over lower latencies, providing users have a router supporting the latest standard. Users will also be able to connect to other and older Wi-Fi standards without problems.

Innovations on the artificial intelligence (AI) side of things have also improved, with Qualcomm saying the chip offers three times more AI processing power than previous generations.

AI-accelerated processes like Microsoft's Eye Contact for virtual meetings is supported - a feature that makes it look like meeting participants are looking into the camera when they're actually looking at the screen.

Qualcomm also introduced Spectra ISP, another feature that stands to benefit video meetings with 4K HDR, better autofocus, auto-white balance, and auto-exposure for the best image quality, and additionally noise and echo cancellation for team or client calls.

The 8xc Gen 3 also gets a new entry-level version, the Snapdragon 7c+ Gen 3, which promises up to 40% better CPU performance and 35% better graphics performance on a 6nm architecture.

Qualcomm has announced plans to achieve net zero Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions by 2040.

The company also pledged to support Business Ambition for 1.5°C, a campaign led by Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) in partnership with the UN Global Compact and We Mean Business coalition.

Qualcomm’s ambitious sustainability plans complement its existing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goal, including interim 2030 science-based emissions reduction targets across Scopes 1, 2, and 3.

"Our net zero goal and commitment to SBTi reflects our belief that environmental sustainability is absolutely imperative, with significant social and economic benefits that require collective action and leadership from Qualcomm and other corporate citizens," said Cristiano Amon, president and chief executive officer at Qualcomm Incorporated.

Qualcomm has set three long-term goals to reduce GHG emissions: reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 50% by 2030; cut absolute Scope 3 GHG emissions by 25% by 2030; and reach net-zero global emissions for Scopes 1, 2, and 3 by 2040.

The firm has already taken steps to meet these long-term goals by opting for 100% renewable energy at its San Diego headquarters.

In line with its strategy, Qualcomm will transition to renewable energy via long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs), decarbonize its operations, and use a minimum amount of renewable energy credits (RECs) and carbon offsets for residual emissions.

Qualcomm also underscored the economic and sustainability benefits of 5G, stating its increased adoption could reduce GHG emissions by 374 million metric tons, which is equivalent to taking 81 million passenger vehicles off US roads for a year.

“5G technologies and products will be instrumental in driving an environmentally sustainable future. We're working with our partners and customers to reduce emissions footprints, conserve resources and harness the sustainability benefits of 5G globally," added Amon.

Qualcomm, the company behind the processors that power nearly every Android-based mobile, is launching its own handset known as the "Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders".

The device has actually been built by Asus and will cost $1,500 (£1,085), but it has been designed to showcase the best of Qualcomm's technology.

As its name suggests, the device will be sold directly to the members of Qualcomm's Snapdragon Insider fan community, which the company set up earlier in the year. This is a club for tech enthusiasts that want to be among the first to see and experience new Snapdragon offerings.

"This is the ultimate extra, built for you, our Snapdragon Insiders community," the company said on its website. "It's a connectivity powerhouse (think the fastest, truly global 5G available, super-fast Wi-Fi 6/6E, and of course, Bluetooth) so you can stay in touch from virtually anywhere. And no matter what you're into, we've got you covered with a curated collection of Snapdragon mobile platform experiences."

The phone's specifications are by no means groundbreaking, with features users will have seen or used elsewhere in 2021, or even 2020. It comes with Android 11, a Snapdragon 888 CPU, 512GB storage, 16GB of RAM, a 6.78in Samsung OLED display with Gorilla Glass Victus, and a finger scanner located on the back of the handset. There is also a 4,000mAh battery with Qualcomm's Quick Charge technology (65W).

Smartphones are largely judged on their camera technology and the Snapdragon for Insiders will come with a triple-lens setup on the back featuring a 64MP Sony image sensor, a 12MP ultra-wide lens and an 8MP telephoto lens with 3 x optical zoom. There will also be a 24MP selfie lens on the front, but this is a little below the likes of the iPhone 12 or the Samsung S21, which are similar in price - although it does also shoot in 8K at 30 frames per second.

The handset will be available "soon" to insiders in the US, UK, Germany, and China, with more regions to be announced soon.

Qualcomm announced a new mobile chipset today targeting high-end 5G mobile phones with faster clock speeds than its predecessor.

The Snapdragon 888 Plus mobile chip is a higher-end version of the existing Snapdragon 888 platform. Qualcomm highlights enhancements to the chipset's artificial intelligence (AI) functionality with its sixth-generation AI engine.

This gives the chip an over 20% boost in AI performance, providing 32 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of processing power, compared to the 26 TOPS in the standard 888 chipset. The upgraded performance will make the chip better at AI-enhanced effects, including noise cancellation and camera enhancement.

Qualcomm says it has upgraded the Kryo 680 CPU used in the existing 888 platform design. The new version runs at up to 3GHz, compared to the 2.84GHz in the 888 chipset's CPU.

Between them, the new platform and its predecessor will support around 130 devices that have already been announced or are in development, said Qualcomm, which has reportedly struggled to cope with demand for its semiconductors amid the general industry shortage. Those devices will hit the market in the third quarter of 2021. ASUS, HONOR, Motorola, and Xiaomi are among those that will ship devices using the new platform.

In related news, Qualcomm also announced several new developments in 5G testing and deployment. These included a new 5G distributed unit accelerator card for virtual radio access networks (VRANs).

RANs are the interface between the handset and the core network they connect to. They are traditionally proprietary systems, but VRAN designs convert these to commodity hardware similar to how other network equipment has moved from proprietary hardware to x86-based appliances.

Qualcomm also upgraded its 5G RAN platform for small cells, which serves the high-frequency, small-cell technologies that will extend 5G inside buildings and in smaller, hard-to-reach areas. It supports high-frequency, short-range millimeter wave technology and sub-6GHz 5G frequencies, which offer lower speeds but further reach. The new system supports version 16 of the 3GPP 5G standard.

The world is seeing a resurgence in smartphone shipments as it emerges from the worst of the pandemic. Canalys has predicted a 12% increase in shipments in 2021, with 43% of those being 5G-capable units, up from 37% for Q1. Growth in the US will lag the global average at 6%.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has abandoned a four-year antitrust case against Qualcomm due to what acting FTC Chair Kelly Slaughter calls "significant headwinds" in pursuing an appeal against the chip company.

The Commission initially sued Qualcomm in January 2017, claiming it enjoyed an unlawful monopoly in the baseband processors that allow smartphones and other cellular devices to communicate via radio networks. The complaint accused the company of exclusionary conduct, taxing its competitors' baseband processor sales, and reducing their ability to innovate.

The complaint said that Qualcomm, which sells its chips and licenses its chip designs, imposed anti-competitive supply and licensing terms on phone manufacturers. The company threatened to disrupt baseband processor supplies to secure elevated royalties for patents it declared essential to industry standards, the FTC said, calling this a “no license, no chips” policy.

At the time, Commissioners voted 2-1 to pursue the complaint, with Commissioner Maureen K. Ohlhausen dissenting in what she called an "extraordinary situation.” She warned that the FTC's case would disrupt intellectual property rights in the US and asserted a "dearth of evidence" in the case.

The FTC won the case initially in 2019, in the Northern District of California. However, Qualcomm appealed and a three-judge panel in the Ninth Court of Appeals overturned the decision in August last year.

The Commission requested an En Banc rehearing of the case, which would have enabled all the judges in the court to consider the appeal rather than just the original three. That request was denied.

Announcing the decision on Monday, Slaughter said the Commission would not petition the Supreme Court to appeal the case.

"The FTC’s staff did an exceptional job presenting the case, and I continue to believe that the district court’s conclusion that Qualcomm violated the antitrust laws was entirely correct and that the court of appeals erred in concluding otherwise," she said.

"Now more than ever, the FTC and other law enforcement agencies need to boldly enforce the antitrust laws to guard against abusive behavior by dominant firms, including in high-technology markets and those that involve intellectual property."

Abandoning the move will be a setback to an FTC that’s been increasingly aggressive against big tech recently. It sued Facebook for anti-competitive practices in December, days after launching a widespread investigation into various tech companies' practices. President Biden also recently nominated an antitrust advocate, Lina Khan, as FTC commissioner.

The grand experiment of ARM-powered Windows 10 laptops is slowly starting to creep towards fruition; we’ve already had the Surface Pro X, Microsoft’s own-brand effort, and now Samsung is picking up the baton for third-party manufacturers with the Galaxy Book S.

Built by Samsung in collaboration with Qualcomm, this sleek device aims to establish a beachhead for Windows on ARM and demonstrate exactly what the new platform is capable of. Admittedly, we weren’t particularly wowed by Microsoft’s efforts, but Samsung’s attempt has benefitted from some added refinement, and has a lot more muscle hidden under its slinky chassis.

Samsung Galaxy Book S review: Design

It’s hard to deny that it’s a slick-looking machine; clad in an aluminium chassis in either a plain - but still professional - silver finish or a bronzed colour that Samsung calls ‘Earthy Gold’, which is subtly striking to look at without being as bold as Apple’s rose-gold MacBooks.

The really eye-catching thing, though, is how slim the device is, with a thickness of less than 12mm. It may not be the thinnest laptop we’ve seen, but it’s certainly up there - and at just 961g, it’s as light as it looks, too.

There are other nice design touches too, such as the way the rear of the lid curves satisfyingly over the hinge, or the way in which the keyboard sits at an almost imperceptible angle. It feels truly luxurious to use. In fact, we’d say it is the most eminently portable machine we’ve seen since the Acer Swift 7.

Samsung Galaxy Book S review: Display

Samsung is famed for its displays, and if you’re expecting this laptop to knock your socks off in that department, you won’t be disappointed. The 13.3in touchscreen panel only has a 1920 x 1080 resolution, but that’s not a complaint - it’s perfectly adequate for a laptop of this size. Anything more would be overkill, and would unnecessarily drain the battery, to boot.

The technical quality is also virtually flawless. Its 94.5% coverage of the sRGB colour spectrum is capable of handling colour-sensitive work, and a maximum brightness of 378cd/m2 should only be a problem in the brightest of working conditions - although bear in mind that there’s no anti-reflective coating here, so beware the glare.

We should also note that Samsung has trimmed the bezels back in order to maximise screen real estate while minimising the laptop’s footprint, a decision which we commend. It’s another neat touch that adds to the laptop’s premium feel, and the screen makes everything from working on documents to watching video an absolute joy.

Samsung Galaxy Book S review: Keyboard and trackpad

Document editing is made even more pleasant by the rather wonderful keyboard. The keys themselves are of the low-profile variety that are becoming increasingly popular on high-end laptops, with minimal travel depth and firm, defined response. The Galaxy Book’s keyboard is definitely in the same ballpark as the likes of the Surface Pro and ThinkPad in terms of how satisfying a typing experience it offers - although it stops just short of equalling either.

All the usual mod cons are present and correct, including multi-stage backlighting and a buffet of function keys, and the glass-topped trackpad - which offers a satisfyingly meaty click with each press - is generously sized considering the limited space the trimmed-down chassis has to work with. One slight bugbear is that the keyboard surround is plastic, as opposed to the aluminium used in the rest of the construction, but it’s a comparatively minor gripe.

Samsung Galaxy Book S review: Software

As an ARM-based laptop, the Galaxy Book S has some proving to do. The concept of Windows 10 on ARM has been talked up by manufacturers, but so far we’ve yet to see anything that really blows our socks off. The Surface Pro X was capable enough, but the lack of full, uncompromised compatibility with traditional x86 apps wasn’t really outweighed by the advantages of a longer battery life or 4G connectivity.

Compatibility will still be an issue for now, sadly - while Microsoft announced in May that support for 64-bit X86 apps (via emulation) is on the way, but for now you’re limited to either native ARM software or emulated 32-bit X86 apps.

As we noted in our Surface Pro X review, that may or may not be an issue for you depending on your software usage. If you’re just after a machine to run Office apps and web browsers, you should be fine, but specialised or legacy applications may throw a spanner or two into the works. It’s not necessarily a deal breaker, though, but it does lose any ARM-based laptop point right out of the gate.

Samsung Galaxy Book S review: Performance and hardware

Thankfully, the performance is right up there. The Galaxy Book S uses the Snapdragon 8cx SoC, which Qualcomm has developed specifically for notebooks, and it’s comparable with Microsoft’s customised SQ1 chipset which we saw in the Pro X.

That means that any apps that can run will do so without complaint, for the most part - we didn’t experience anything like as many instances of Photoshop and Chrome crashing as we did with the Pro X.

It’s not going to be doing any heavy lifting when it comes to processor-intensive tasks like video editing. But, let’s be honest, expecting an ultraportable like this to tackle anything more demanding than light photo editing is like buying a moped to tow a caravan.

The octa-core CPU acquitted itself admirably in the Geekbench 5 benchmark tests, scoring 699 for single-core operations and 2,721 for multi-core tasks. That’s just a hair behind the Surface Pro X’s scores of 736 and 2,891, and only around 10-15% slower than the Surface Pro 7. It’s also comfortably ahead of the Google Pixelbook Go for multi-threaded processing.

Samsung Galaxy Book S review: Battery life

This is a respectable level of performance, but it’s not what we would call earth-shattering. The same cannot be said for the battery life, though. We were somewhat skeptical about Samsung’s claims of all-day battery life after our previous experience with the Surface Pro X, but hats off to Samsung - the Galaxy Book S really delivers.

In our video playback tests, it racked up an absolutely jaw-dropping score of 14hrs 28mins; that’s an outstanding score, miles ahead of the vast majority of Windows laptops. Even the comparatively power-efficient Dell Inspiron 14 7000 didn’t manage to crack 14 hours, despite having more room in the chassis for a bigger battery. Compared to the slightly underwhelming Surface Pro X, the Galaxy Book S is a much more impressive example of the capabilities of Windows on ARM.

Even if you do manage to drain the battery, you’re in luck; the Galaxy Book S uses the same kind of USB-C charger as the company’s phones - which means no more lugging around a hefty power brick - and the 25W ‘super fast charging’ will give you an extra 30-40% battery after just an hour’s charging. In fact, the laptop’s low power consumption means that it’s even compatible with the adapters from most high-end smartphones. You may not be able to juice it up in a hurry with a regular smartphone charger, but you can at least keep it ticking over if you haven’t got a proper power source to hand.

Samsung Galaxy Book S review: Ports and features

Aside from power efficiency, one of the other headline features of Windows on ARM is its support for 4G LTE connectivity. Initially, we didn’t think that we’d get much use out of this functionality, confined as we are to working from home. Thankfully, Virgin Media saw fit to have several prolonged outages while we were reviewing the Galaxy Book S, giving us the perfect opportunity to test out the 4G support.

While the speeds of just under 10Mb/sec delivered by our EE data SIM aren’t quite up to the multi-gigabit figures the Snapdragon 8cx platform is allegedly capable of supporting, we have to confess that it was incredibly handy having an LTE connection to fall back on when regular broadband wasn’t an option. The connection was stable enough to handle everything from multi-tabbed browsing and downloads, to content streaming and videoconferencing.

Other aspects of this laptop’s connectivity, however, are less convenient. There’s a pair of USB-C ports - one on either side - but they’re USB 3.1 rather than full-fat Thunderbolt 3 and apart from a 3.5mm headphone jack, that’s your lot. It does have a fingerprint sensor for biometric authentication via Windows Hello, but there’s no facial recognition due to the lack of an IR camera. In fact, that camera isn't much use for anything - it uses a 720p resolution, but images are so noisy and grainy that it’s hardly worth the bother. On the other hand, you can also expand the 256GB of storage via a microSD card slot.

Samsung Galaxy Book S review: Verdict

After our experiences with the Surface Pro X, we weren’t expecting terribly much from the Samsung Galaxy Book S; a sleek and shiny package, maybe, but with little to recommend it above and beyond similarly-priced Intel-based laptops.

Instead, what we got was a laptop that not only looks amazing and goes toe-to-toe with rivals on performance, but also delivers one of the most staggeringly long-lived batteries we’ve seen - and all for less than £1,000 after tax.

That’s some seriously impressive stuff, and well worth overlooking some lingering compatibility issues for. If this is the future of Windows on ARM, then it can’t come soon enough.

Samsung Galaxy Book S specifications

Qualcomm has announced an upgrade to its Snapdragon 765G platform, in the form of the new Snapdragon 768G.

Originally released in December 2019, Snapdragon 765G platform phones have just started trickling out, but the company has already unveiled an upgraded version. This upgraded platform will provide users with better CPU and GPU performance than its still-fresh predecessor.

The differences between the 765G and the 768G are few, but the main distinctions are the 768G’s upgraded Qualcomm Adreno 620 GPU and Qualcomm Kryo 475 CPU. Qualcomm claims 768G’s upgraded Adreno 620 GPU will offer up to 15% faster graphics rendering than the Snapdragon 765G.

The revised Qualcomm Kryo 475 CPU will boast a clock speed of 2.8GHz, a notable boost over the 765G’s 2.4GHz version of the same CPU.

The Snapdragon 768G 5G mobile platform will also feature an integrated Snapdragon X52 modem with support for mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G and will be compatible with standalone and non-standalone 5G networks. This will allow it to support all key regions and frequency bands, making this a more useful processor worldwide.

Similar to its predecessor, the 768G mobile platform is meant for gaming-optimized devices. Designed to provide smoother gameplay and more enhanced detail and colors via true 10-bit HDR, Snapdragon 768G also gives users access to special game extensions and optimizations.

“We are uniquely positioned to accelerate 5G commercialization at scale and Snapdragon 768G is an example of how we’re continuing to deliver solutions to address the needs of our OEM customers,” shared Kedar Kondap, VP of product management at Qualcomm. “Our expanding portfolio has the potential to make 5G accessible to billions of smartphone users around the world.”

Also included in Qualcomm’s announcement is the release of the Redmi K30 5G Racing Edition, the first commercial device to feature the Snapdragon 768G mobile platform. This smartphone supports 5G SA/NSA dual-mode and features a 120Hz display and up to a 64-megapixel camera.

Qualcomm has revealed the Snapdragon 8cx, a chip designed specifically for Windows 10 'Always Connected' PCs, claiming hefty performance into the first ever 7-nanometre chip for PCs.

It's the largest, most powerful CPU Qualcomm has ever made and has beaten Intel in reaching the 7nm process node for laptop and desktop computers; Intel has been attempting to create 10nm-based Core processors but has somewhat stalled the process given it has struggled to develop the chips at scale.

With the X' standing for extreme, the Snapdragon 8cx promises significant performance boosts over its predecessor, the Snapdragon 850, which was the first system-on-a-chip designed for Windows 10 Always Connected PCs.

Sporting an 8-core CPUs, the Snapdragon 8cx features a tightly packed plethora of transistors to offer boosted performance without compromising on battery life.

Qualcomm claims that the 8cx's performance will rival that of Intel's 15-watt U-series processors currently used in Windows's low-end thin and light systems, except that it will draw on less than half of the electricity at just 7 watts.

The chip will also feature a brand new GPU, the Adreno 680 Extreme which it said would eclipse the performance of its previous iteration, the Adreno on the Snapdragon 850, boasting 3.5 times better performance and performance that will be 60% more efficient.

In recent times there has been a big push for Microsoft and Qualcomm to create a new breed of Chromebook-like thin and light productivity machines and the 8cx promises to deliver on that.

Although Intel and AMD comprise the bipartite market dominance for PC processors, Qualcomm has long cemented its authority in the mobile sphere, with most Android phones running some variant of Qualcomm's chips. With the Snapdragon 8cx, there is a possibility that the mobile mammoth could be making some large footprints in the PC scene very soon, especially with the debut of more capable Windows 10 'Always Connected' PCs.

Building on its suitability for always-ready, the chip will have a new X24 LTE modem which won't quite get up to 5G speeds like the X50 5G, unlike its 855 mobile chip, although Qualcomm is working on it, users can expect a respectable 2Gbps speed out of the cellular tech.

Everyone is excited about this because the 8cx is the first chip it has produced that genuinely shows potential to run Windows properly. Apparently, it's capable of running Windows Enterprise and that's partially due to its massive upgrade in memory when compared to the Snapdragon 850. It will support up to 16gb of LPDDR4x RAM as opposed to a lacklustre 4GB in its older sibling.

Despite having the option on the 7nm chip to favour battery life, Qualcomm has gone down the performance route, but still promises a battery life comparable to the 850. It should last you all day on a full charge and thanks to the Quick Charge 4+ technology, hook it up to a USB-C and it should juice up fairly quickly if its running low.

The new ARM chip which joins Apple in its superiority over Intel's versions is perfect for always-ready machines that are increasing in popularity. Always-ready PCs are computers which have mobile phone-like cellular connectivity, near day-long battery lives and month-long standby times. This means they're always ready when you need them and always connected to the internet without having to rely on public WiFi or personal hotspots for internet connectivity.

With battery life, connectivity and portability three of three key factors to consider when making a laptop purchase, we could be seeing much more of Qualcomm in the PC sphere as the market potentially grows.

Qualcomm has announced its latest flagship processor, the Snapdragon 855, which will bring 5G connectivity to the next wave of flagship Android phones.

The announcement which was met with little surprise, comes almost exactly a year after it announced its previous flagship processor, the 845, at the same Snapdragon Technology Summit conference.

Among many other features that the system-on-a-chip (SoC) will provide, the one everyone's is interested in is its 5G integration. Demonstrated in Qualcomm's reference model 5G phone, the chip promises to support "multi-gigabit" download speeds over the new advanced networks, notably the millimetre wave New Radio (mmWave NR) standard and with spectrum on the sub-6Ghz level.

Details of performance boosts have been largely kept under wraps however, it did say the chip will provide "up to three times the AI performance compared to the previous generation mobile platform". More details are expected to be announced, however, we can presume that face-recognition in cameras will become faster and more accurate, thanks to the integration of computer vision technology into the chip's image signal processor, and battery management is also likely to see some optimisation.

Snapdragon Elite Gaming is a term given to a number of new features that will, yes, make mobile gaming much more enjoyable, including upgrades to augmented reality experiences but it hasn't dropped too many hints around what this truly entails, though it will involve working more closely with software developers to aid processor and GPU optimisation.

Cleaning fingerprint sensors after only a few uses will also be a thing of the past thanks to the Snapdragon 855's support for ultrasonic fingerprint sensors which the chipmaker claims to be the "only mobile solution that can accurately detect fingerprints through numerous contaminants".

But, as mentioned earlier, 5G will is the main selling point of the chipset, with Qualcomm noting the first flagship 5G-capable smartphone will debut in the US, with Samsung creating it. Such a phone is highly likely to be the Galaxy S10, set to be revealed early next year.

While 5G has been somewhat hyped-up for the past five years or so, it is now looking to become a reality, with major rollouts expected in the UK from the start of 2019 onward.

The UK's largest mobile network EE has announced a serious commitment to bringing 5G to the UK after initial testing of the technology in East London trial sites. While there are some obstacles to overcome before the large-scale rollout of 5G such as the strengthening of roof sites for the 50kg 5G antennas, by the end of 2019 the carrier aims to have launched 5G in 16 UK cities, starting with major and capital cities.

London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham and Manchester will be the first to get the technology, closely followed by ten more cities: Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Hull, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry and Bristol.

Chip giant Qualcomm has started sampling what it's calling "the world's first" 2Gps LTE modem, the Snapdragon X24.

The Category 20 LTE modem supports up to 2 gigabits per second (Gbps) download speeds and is also said to be the first chip built on a 7nm FinFET process.

As the company's eighth generation LTE multimode modem and third generation Gigabit LTE product, Qualcomm claims it features "the most advanced cellular features of any commercially available 4G LTE modem to date", bolstering the LTE foundation for future 5G devices and networks.

"The Snapdragon X24 LTE modem sets a major mobile industry milestone, designed to provide enhanced mobile broadband and deliver an extremely important gigabit coverage layer for commercial 5G networks and mobile devices that are expected to start launching in 2019," said Qualcomm's SVP and GM of 4G/5G and industrial IOT, Serge Willenegger.

"[The] X24 packs a powerful array of the most advanced 4G LTE technologies commercially available, helping mobile operators to fully mobilise their spectrum assets and maximise the capacity of their Gigabit LTE networks, and mobile device makers to offer consumers a tangible glimpse of our 5G future," he added.

The X24 also supports up to seven times carrier aggregation in the downlink, as well as 4x4 multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO themethod for multiplying the capacity of a radio link using multiple transmit and receive antennae)on up to five aggregated LTE carriers, both of which are said to be industry firsts, for a total of up to 20 concurrent spatial LTE streams.This, Qualcomm said, is designed to allow devices that feature its new modem to make use of all spectrum assets available from a mobile operator.

However, as impressive as these record-breaking mobile internet speeds are, mobile operators are nowhere near being able to offer 2Gbps download speeds. The most advanced networks only offer three aggregated LTE carriers at the moment, so it would probably be a while before they can even get close to such super-fast mobile broadband speeds.

Nevertheless, the Snapdragon X24 LTE modem will be featured in a live demonstration at Mobile World Congress Barcelona in conjunction with Ericsson, Telstra and NETGEAR.

Qualcomm and Baidu have teamed up to bring the Baidu DuerOS AI platform to Snapdragon processors, enabling device manufacturers to implement smarter voice recognition in smartphones and IoT hardware.

Baidu's AI tech is already available in a range of devices including mobile phones, TV set-top boxes and smart speakers, but integrating it into Qualcomm's Aqstic hardware and software means it will be available in a much wider range of devices. It will be available on Snapdragon mobile processors, including the Snapdragon 845, which will be integrated into flagship smartphones in 2018.

"Qualcomm Technologies continues to drive research into AI, and we are committed to the development of on-device AI, including audio. Qualcomm Technologies is pleased to collaborate with Baidu on AI for voice-enabled solutions," said Keith Kressin, senior vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies.

"The collaboration with Baidu will bring AI for voice-enabled solutions to next-generation Snapdragon mobile platforms, allowing users to wake up smartphones and IoT devices using their voice in their natural language at any time and at extremely low power, while utilising Baidu's DuerOS voice services."

The collaboration offers always-on, low-power voice recognition that's triggered using the phrase "Xiaodu Xiaodu." It also features echo cancellation and noise suppression to ensure the right results are triggered rather than picking up distracting background noise.

"Through the collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies, we will bring a new AI voice experience to OEMs of smartphones and IoT devices around the world," Kun Jing, general manager, Duer business unit, Baidu added.

"Leveraging Baidu's strengths in AI, big data, knowledge graph, information and services ecosystems, DuerOS will support OEMs with its strong capabilities, while providing users with more comprehensive and quality information and services to satisfy their needs."

Qualcomm wants the iPhone X banned in the US because Apple apparently infringed the chip maker's patents, including some relating to improving bandwidth in devices, saving power and enhancing photos from the rear-facing camera.

The company also said Apple copied some elements of the Palm OS, which Qualcomm obtained the rights to in 2014, when it bought many of Palm's patents.

"All of these Palm inventions - owned by Qualcomm - have vastly improved the functionality of mobile devices and the user experience, and all of them are widely found in Apple products without license or permission," Qualcomm said in its filing.

The announcement comes shortly after Apple threw yet more fuel onto the Qualcomm/Apple fire, alleging the chipmaker had infringed its own patents, specifically relating to how its processors manage power on devices. However, Qualcomm insists that it did not issue this fresh appeal after Apple filed its lawsuit, saying it was always on the cards.

"You can't react that quickly to file lawsuits," Rosenburg told The San Diego Union-Tribune. "We were in the process of filing three new district court cases in San Diego today, and one new ITC case in Washington, D.C. Those involve a group of 16 patents that are additional to the ones we have already sued them on, and five of those 16 are ones we are suing them on in the ITC seeking an exclusion order."

Qualcomm has also asked the ITC to consider banning AT&T and T-Mobile's branded iPhone 7s too, which use Intel's chips alongside many of Qualcomm's technologies, according to the company, suggesting this fight is also about competition rather than just clear-cut patent infringement.

"Apple can import iPhones (regardless of who supplies the modems) that do not infringe the patents asserted in this action, but Apple has no inherent right to infringe Qualcomm's [non-standards essential patents] through the sale of its iPhones," Qualcomm said in its filing. "Preventing such infringement, and thereby rewarding innovation, is the very purpose for which the patent system was designed."

Qualcomm's most recent court filing against Apple happened less than a month ago when the chipmaker claimed Apple was giving rival processor company Intel information about its chips.

Qualcomm is suing Apple for allegedly failing to adhere to the terms and conditions it has set out for using its chips in iOS devices, saying the iPhone maker has used the information it provided to help rival Intel.

The chipmaker filed its lawsuit against the tech giant last week in San Diego, saying Apple breached the contract between the two companies,Bloomberghas reported.

It's the latest filing in an ongoing battle between the two companies over licensing fees that Apple purportedly hasn't paid Qualcomm, despite the smartphone, tablet and computer manufacturer using its chips as an integral part of some of its devices.

The company's chips are present in a large number of iPhones to help them connect to networks, but recently, Apple has started using Intel in some models of its iPhone to carry out the same job, including the iPhone 7.

Now Qualcomm has accused Apple of allowing Intel access to its software secrets, after Apple reportedly requested information from Qualcomm and included an Intel engineer in on the query. Apparently, this isn't the first time Apple has asked for a competitor to try and access Qualcomm's confidential information. The Cupertino-based company apparently asked another engineer for information aboutdata download technology.

Apple has previously accused Qualcomm of charging too much for the use of its patented technology, although the chipmaker retaliated by saying that Apple is lying to regulators to get out of paying the full fees.

There are rumours Apple could completely drop Qualcomm chips from its devices now the company has reportedly stopped providing some of the software needed for the tech manufacturer to test its devices, a source toldReuterslast week.

The chipmaker said this wasn't the case though. "We are committed to supporting Apple's new devices consistent with our support of all others in the industry," Qualcomm said in a statement.

09/08/2017:The US International Trade Commission (USITC) has started an investigation into Apple products to see whether they infringe on Qualcomm patents.

The investigation, based on a Qualcomm complaint filed on 7 July 7, will seek to determine whether certain mobile electronic devices, such as the iPhone 7, and components in the devices including baseband processor modems, infringe on Qualcomm patents - something Apple has denied.

Qualcomm has asked the commission to issue a limited exclusion order and a cease and desist order on any Apple products found to infringe on its patents.

"The complaint alleges violations of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 in the importation into the United States and sale of certain mobile electronic devices and radio frequency and processing components thereof that infringe patents asserted by the complainant" said the USITC. It has identified Apple as the respondent in the investigation.

Now, the case will be assigned to one of the trade commission's administrative law judges, who will schedule and hold an evidentiary hearing. The judge will then determine whether Apple is violating section 337 and the decision is subject to review by the commission.

The USITC is going to make a final determination as soon as it can, and after 45 days will set a target date for completing the investigation.

It added: "USITC remedial orders in section 337 cases are effective when issued and become final 60 days after issuance unless disapproved for policy reasons by the US Trade Representative within that 60-day period."

Don Rosenberg, executive VP and general counsel of Qualcomm, said: "Qualcomm is pleased with the ITC's decision to investigate Apple's unfair trade practices and the unauthorized importation of products using Qualcomm's patents."

He added: "We look forward to the ITC's expeditious investigation of Apple's ongoing infringement of our intellectual property and the accelerated relief that the Commission can provide."

Qualcomm has also sued for patent infringement in Germany in a lawsuit which commenced on 17 July, seeking "damages and injunctive relief for iPhones imported or sold in Germany".

The chip maker launched a complaint with the USITC in July to prevent Apple from selling some of its iPhones in the US, as it claims the tech giant has infringed six of its patents. It wants to bar the import of some iPhones and Apple products that use Intel wireless processors as it claims the devices using these chips are using Qualcomm inventions without its permission.

Intel hit back at Qualcomm, saying the firm was simply trying to maintain its monopoly of mobile chips in the US, and that the exclusion order would severely damage competitive conditions in the US.

IT Pro has contacted Apple for comment.

24/07/2017: Intel accuses Qualcomm of creating chip "monopoly"

Intel has hit back at Qualcomm for attempting to get Apple products running Intel processors banned in the US.

Qualcomm had demanded the ban at the start of July, claiming these products infringed its patents, but Intel has responded by accusing Qualcomm of trying to "maintain its modern monopoly".

In a letterto the International Trade Commission (ITC), Intel saidthat Qualcomm's aim is not to exclude supposedly infringing products from the US but to "exclude Intel modems from the United States, while giving free passage to allegedly infringing Apple products that incorporate a Qualcomm modem".

Intel also claims that Qualcomm is trying to use its complaint to "maintain its modern monopoly and perpetuate its broader and anticompetitive scheme".

The chipmaker added that an exclusion order on Apple products being sold in the US would "severely damage competitive conditions in the United States economy by reinforcing Qualcomm's hold on the premium LTE modern merchant market".

Intel claimed an exclusion order would fence it out of the LTE market and would send a message to other manufacturers about the risks of defying Qualcomm.

Apple and Qualcomm are locked in dispute over patents, with Qualcomm believing that some Intel-running iPhones infringe on its own patents, and therefore these products should be banned.The patents in question relate to chips prolonging battery life, as well as a method for handling video streams.

An Apple spokesperson previously toldIT Pro:"Qualcomm's illegal business practices are harming Apple and the entire industry. They supply us with a single connectivity component, but for years have been demanding a percentage of the total cost of our products - effectively taxing Apple's innovation."

Apple sued Qualcomm for $1 billion in January this year, claiming it had been overcharged for some patents.

Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Samsung took Apple's side in the latest dispute last week.The groupstated that Qualcomm's practices are anti-competitive and harmful to consumers. It declared that "Qualcomm is trying to use the ITC as a tool to maintain their anti-competitive practices in the face of lawsuits from Apple and the FTC".

However, Intel isn't innocent of attempts to monopolise the chip market.It was fined 1 billion by the EUin 2009 for allegedly offering kickbacks to computer manufacturers to encourage them to use its own chips instead of rival AMD's, and to delay launches of products featuring AMD chips.

Qualcomm has been on Intel's radar ever since announcing that along with Microsoft it will release the first ARM-based Windows PCs later this year. Intel has been a heavyweight for 40 years in this market and in a blog post explicitly warned that in the beginning of its microprocessor business it "needed to enforce its patent rights against various companies", mentioning AMD, Cyrix, and Chips and Technologies.

It underlined how "some companies may try to emulate Intel's proprietary x86 ISA without Intel's authorization" and that it doesn't welcome unlawful infringement of its patents.

07/07/2017:Qualcomm demands ban on iPhones, claiming patent infringement

Chipmaker Qualcomm has filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) in a bid to prevent Apple selling some iPhones in the US, claiming that the company has infringed six of its patents.

Qualcomm wants the ITC to investigate Apple and bar the import of particular iPhones and other products into the US to stop it from using Qualcomm's technology. It also wants to ban iPhones that use cellular baseband processors, and is seeking a cease and desist order to bar further sales of Apple products that have already been imported to the US.

The Snapdragon maker is only looking to block imports of iPhones that use wireless processors made by rival Intel, which would leave its own chip sales unaffected. According to theFinancial Times, Intel first began supplying these processors to Apple in the iPhone 7 last September. Qualcomm claims that the devices using Intel chips are allegedly using a number of Qualcomm inventions without its permission.

The patents in question relate to prolonging battery life, as well as a method for handling video streams.

Dan Rosenberg, executive vice president and general counsel of Qualcomm, said: "Qualcomm's inventions are at the heart of every iPhone and extend well beyond modem technologies or cellular standards."

He added: "The patents we are asserting represent six important technologies, out of a portfolio of thousands, and each is vital to iPhone functions. Apple continues to use Qualcomm's technology while refusing to pay for it. These lawsuits seek to stop Apple's infringement of six of our patented technologies."

Qualcomm also filed a complaint against Apple in the US District Court for the Southern District of California, alleging that Apple infringes the same six patents in the complaint filed in the ITC. It seeks damages and injunctive relief.

The company expects the ITC investigation to commence in August and for the case to be tried next year. Despite this, the ITC could take around 18 months to conduct an investigation and make a ruling so restrictions on iPhone sales won't potentially happen until the release of Apple's 2018 iPhone model, presumably the iPhone 9.

An Apple spokesperson told IT Pro:"Qualcomm's illegal business practices are harming Apple and the entire industry. They supply us with a single connectivity component, but for years have been demanding a percentage of the total cost of our products - effectively taxing Apple's innovation."

The spokesperson added: "We believe deeply in the value of intellectual property but we shouldn't have to pay them for technology breakthroughs they have nothing to do with. We've always been willing to pay a fair rate for standard technology used in our products and since they've refused to negotiate reasonable terms we're asking the courts for help."

Reported circulated last month thatApple was falling back on inferior Intel hardwareto meet supply demands for the iPhone 8.

Apple was allegedly looking to reduce its reliance on Qualcomm by increasing the percentage of baseband modems supplied by Intel this year. This echoed its policy for the iPhone 7, which saw Intel receive an outsourced proportion of 30%. This created a problem for Apple as the Intel chips offer inferior performance to Qualcomm's.

Qualcomm sued Applein April, claiming that it deliberately did not use these chips to their full potential in the iPhone 7 so they would not perform any better than those made by Intel. There is a consensus that the iPhone maker would shift back to Qualcomm hardware for its next phone, but this may not be the case considering their feud.

11/04/2017:Qualcomm has countersued Apple, claiming the tech giant deliberately failed to use Qualcomm's iPhone 7 modem chips to their full potential so they would not perform any better than ones made by Intel.

The lawsuit comes after several from Apple served on Qualcomm earlier this year.

Qualcomm listed several complaints in adocument,including claims that Apple breached agreements and mischaracterised agreements and negotiations with Qualcomm; interfered with Qualcomm's long-standing agreements with Qualcomm licensees that manufacture iPhones and iPads; encouraged regulatory attacks on Qualcomm's business in various jurisdictions around the world by misrepresenting facts and making false statements.

Qualcomm also alleged that Apple chose not to utilise the full performance of Qualcomm's modem chips in its iPhone 7, misrepresented the performance disparity between iPhones using Qualcomm modems and those using competitor-supplied modems, and threatened Qualcomm to prevent it from making any public comparisons about the superior performance of the Qualcomm-powered iPhones.

"Apple could not have built the incredible iPhone franchise that has made it the most profitable company in the world, capturing over 90% of smartphone profits, without relying upon Qualcomm's fundamental cellular technologies. Now, after a decade of historic growth, Apple refuses to acknowledge the well established and continuing value of those technologies," said Qualcomm executive VPand general counsel Don Rosenberg.

He added that Apple had "launched a global attack on Qualcomm and is attempting to use its enormous market power to coerce unfair and unreasonable license terms from Qualcomm.

"We intend to vigorously defend our business model, and pursue our right to protect and receive fair value for our technological contributions to the industry."

Apple had reportedly throttled Qualcomm chips in a bid to keep a uniform experience across the iPhone range.

Qualcomm said it is seeking, among other things, "damages from Apple for reneging on its promises in several agreements and to enjoin Apple from further interference with Qualcomm's agreements with the companies that manufacture iPhones and iPads for Apple".

The Qualcomm lawsuit comes after Apple filed its own lawsuit in January in the US demanding $1 billion from Qualcomm, arguing that it had been overcharged on the use of Qualcomm's patents, with Qualcomm allegedly charging for patents on technologies it had nothing to do with. Apple also filed lawsuits against the firm in the UK and China.

Qualcomm has been fined almost $774 million (584m) by Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission, after it ruled the company had abused its dominant position in the smartphone modem market by unfairly bumping up its licensing fees.

The ruling is yet another legal challenge against the US chip maker and its anti-competitive practices, having already received fines in China and South Korea. The company is also battling an ongoing lawsuit brought by Apple, which claims Qualcomm attempted to squeeze existing contracts for better terms, knowing that Apple was reliant on its modems.

Taiwan's FTC argued that because of Qualcomm's tight grip on the market, particularly in the manufacture of CDMA, LTE modem chips, and associated patents, the company was able to force customers in the region to agree to unfavourable terms, including exclusivity deals that shut out chip competitors.

These practices were found to have been in breach of Taiwanese competition laws, leading to a hefty fine of $23.4 billion Taiwan dollars.

Qualcomm disagrees with the ruling, adding that it would appeal the decision and the fine when a formal ruling is delivered within the next few weeks.

"The fine bears no rational relationship to the amount of Qualcomm's revenues or activities in Taiwan, and Qualcomm will appeal the amount of the fine and the method used to calculate it," said Qualcomm, in a statement on Wednesday.

The California-based chip designer has enjoyed a dominant position within the smartphone hardware market, largely thanks to its LTE modems and Snapdragon processor range which are used in many of the leading flagship devices on the market.

However, the company has faced challenges over anti-competitive practices over the past few years as it was seen to exploit its position. In 2015 China hit the company with a $975 million fine after a 14 month investigation ruled it had unfairly raised the royalty rates for local companies using Qualcomm products.

A year later, the company faced an almost identical antitrust probe in South Korea, where authorities ruled it had forced companies to pay royalties for an unnecessarily wide range of patents, as part of a deal to supply modem chips. As a result, Qualcomm was fined $854 million, South Korea's largest ever levy brought against a company.

Most recently Qualcomm has fallen foul of Apple, one of its largest customers. The two US companies have fought a back and forth legal battle over the past year, in which Apple claims Qualcomm violated contract terms and failed to license its products on a fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) basis.

Apple indirectly pays royalties to Qualcomm through its contract with manufacturers, although these payments are supposed to be reimbursed, something that Qualcomm stopped doing in 2016. Following lawsuits and counter lawsuits, including attempts by Qualcomm to get the iPhone banned in the US, Apple has since turned to Intel to supply modem chips for its new phones, resulting in a 13% drop in Qualcomm's market share last year.

And to make matters worse, there has also been talk of a potential revolt among its investors, as according to a filing made in May seen by the Register, there are a number of shareholders that are unsurprisingly unhappy with the company's constant legal battles and underwhelming financial results.

PhotobyCoolcaesar / CC BY 2.0

Qualcomm has unveiled its latest range of chipsets designed to bring powerful machine learning capabilities and improved battery performance to mid-range smartphones.

The Snapdragon 660 and 630 mobile platform processors boast a "leap in performance" over previous generations, providing longer lasting batteries and faster speeds over LTE, according to Qualcomm.

They are both built using the 14nm FinFet process, offering support for up to 8GB of RAM and resolutions up to QHD. The 660 promises a 20% performance increase over its predecessor, the Snapdragon 653, while the 630 claims a 30% increase over the 625. Qualcomm clearly sees potential for profit in the mid-range tier, as the higher-end devices increasingly turn to the newer but more expensive 10nm process.

Battery capabilities have also been heavily optimised, with both processors supporting Quick Charge technology to produce up to 50% battery life in 15 minutes of charging.

Qualcomm has even thrown in a Neural Processing Engine SDK, which will allow developers to power applications built using machine learning. The framework offers support for Caffe/Caffe2 and TensorFlow, which enable the implementation of neural networks on the processor core - this should make it easier to integrate machine learning into new features and apps.

Other capabilities include the Qualcomm Spectra 160 camera ISP, which provides support for enhanced image qualities in lower light environments, and improved power efficiency for dual camera devices.

"With the introduction of the Snapdragon 660 and 630 Mobile Platforms, we are thrilled that features such as improved image quality and fast LTE speeds will now be available in a wide array of devices without sacrificing performance or quality," said Kedar Kondap, vice president of product management at Qualcomm.

"This ensures that a greater number of consumers will be able to take advantage of higher quality user experiences in camera, audio and visual processing, connectivity, improved CPU and GPU performance, fast charging, security and machine learning."

The Snapdragon 660 mobile platform is shipping now and the 630 will be available towards the end of the month.

Qualcomm has been ordered to refund Blackberry $815 million, after losing a patent arbitration case against the company.

Back in 2016, BlackBerry and Qualcomm agreed to arbitrate a dispute on whether Qualcomm's royalty cap program applied to non-refundable royalty prepayments made by BlackBerry between 2010 and 2015. Qualcomm claimed that the cap was voluntary.

"While Qualcomm does not agree with the decision, it is binding and not appealable," the chipmaker said in a statement.

The award will later increase to include interest and lawyer fees. A final total is expected on 30 May.

"BlackBerry and Qualcomm have a longstanding relationship and continue to be valued technology partners," said BlackBerry executive chairman and CEO, John Chen. "We are pleased the arbitration panel rule in our favour and look forward to collaborating with Qualcomm in security for ASICs and solutions for the automotive industry."

The loss comes at a very poor time for Qualcomm, which is currently involved in a patent lawsuit against Apple as well.

As reported by Ars Technica Apple filed the suit against Qualcomm back in January, claiming it charges companies billions in royalties for "technologies they have nothing to do with" and abuses its monopoly power of the mobile wireless chip market.

Qualcomm issued a countersuit earlier this week, alleging that Apple is forcing it to accept less than what's fair for access to its patents. The company denied a total of 389 allegations made by Apple.

Apple has accused Qualcomm Beijing of abusing its position in the industry as the dominant chip supplier by violating Chinese laws in an attempt to maintain a monopoly, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday.

Qualcomm, which is a major supplier of wireless connectivity chips to Apple and Samsung devices, is also alleged to have under delivered on promises it made to license patents widely and inexpensively, according to Reuters. Apple is now seeking 1 billion yuan (115 million) in damages as a result.

The lawsuit comes after the FTC issued a complaint against Qualcomm on 17 January, in which the company was accused of using anti-competitive tactics. Apple also issued a complaint on Friday to the federal court in California, requesting $1 billion in rebates for overcharged Qualcomm chips. It now appears the lawsuit has spread to Qualcomm's eastern divisions.

Although the company has not seen the lawsuit brought by Apple, Qualcomm stated the complaint "alleges a violation of China's Anti-Monopoly Law, and the other requests a determination of the terms of a patent license between Qualcomm and Apple for Qualcomm's cellular standard essentials patents".

Qualcomm claimed it has attempted to settle the matter with Apple, but insist the tech giant is simply trying to manoeuvre for a better deal.

"These filings by Apple's Chinese subsidiary are just part of Apple's efforts to find ways to pay less for Qualcomm's technology," said Don Rosenberg, executive VP and general counsel of Qualcomm. "Apple was offered terms consistent with terms accepted by more than one hundred other Chinese companies and refused to even consider them."

But Apple contests that it's regularly charged over "five times" more in its transactions than other companies, according to a statement to Business Insider, relating to its complaint on Friday. "Despite being just one of over a dozen companies who contributed to basic cellular standards, Qualcomm insists on charging Apple at least five times more in payments than all the other cellular patent licensors we have agreements with combined," the company said.

"To protect this business scheme, Qualcomm has taken increasingly radical steps - most recently withholding nearly $1 billion in payments from Apple as retaliation for responding truthfully to law enforcement agencies investigating them," it added.

Pressure is mounting against Qualcomm as the company faces legal action for unfair practices around the globe. In February 2015 Qualcomm was forced to hand over $975 million to China following a yearlong antitrust probe, and was most recently fined $854 million by South Korean authorities for unfair practices in patent licensing.

Tantalising details of Qualcomm's latest flagship Snapdragon 835 chip have appeared online, suggesting the upcoming Galaxy S8 could feature the powerful new processor.

A leaked spec table, posted to Chinese microblogging website Weibo, suggests the Snapdragon 835 chip will use an octa-core 'Kyro 200' CPU. While the specific clock speed is still unknown, this will almost certainly be higher than the 3.2GHz found in the Snapdragon 830.

The table also suggests that the new chip, with model number "MSM 8998", will power Samsung's to-be-announced Galaxy S8 phone. It will also feature the Adreno 540 GPU, 4GB of LPDDR RAM and Qualcomm's top of the line X16 modem, which can reach up to 1GB download speeds.

It will come as no surprise to learn that the new 835 chips will be developed using Qualcomm's new efficient 10nm technology, which allows processors to be 27% more powerful at 40% reduced power consumption.

The leak seems to dismiss claims that the US version of the S8 would feature the Snapdragon 830, with the Exynos 8895 SoC powering devices released elsewhere.

What is also unsurprising is that the table suggests the S8 will be revealed at the Barcelona Mobile World Congress tradeshow in 2017, which is common for new Samsung devices.

06/10/2016: Reports suggest that Samsung will be the sole manufacturer of the upcoming Snapdragon 830 chipset from Qualcomm.

The new chip will be built with a 10nm process and will be used in half of the Galaxy S8 devices, the other half using the Exynos 8895 SoC, according to ETNews.

This follows a similar approach Samsung used this year with its Galaxy S7 phones, using the Snapdragon 820 chipset exclusively in US models.

There are also rumours that the Korean tech giant will initiate a new chip development process to reduce production costs. This 'Fan-out Panel Level Package' technology promises to remove the need for printed circuit boards in the package substrate.

Most importantly this newer process has the potential to increase power-efficiency, which is essential for newer, battery-hungry devices. This should also reduce the risk of over-heating, which troubled last year's 810.

The smaller 10nm process should ensure an increased performance for the 830 compared to the current 14nm 820.

Google recently revealed that its new Pixel handsets would be launching with the Snapdragon 821, a 10% performance increase on the older 820 chipset.

Recent leaks of Samsung S8 device specs point to a seriously powerful phone. If correct, we could be looking at a 3.2GHz octa-core processor with 6GB of RAM to boot.

Picture: Snapdragon S4

Qualcomm and NXP have entered into a difinitive agreement, which will see the chip maker swallow up the semiconductor firm.

The decision was announced today, following a unanimous decision from both boards. Qualcomm intends to offer NXP shareholders $110 per share in cash, which will equate to a total purchase price of about $47 billion.

While Qualcomm is a specialist in mobile technology, particularly making chips for smartphones, NXP operates in slightly different areas, including secure identification, network processing and, notably, automotive.

This latter category includes advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), such as collision avoidance, body and networking, secure access, telematics and other connectivity. It also has a presence in IoT.

Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm, said in a statement: "With innovation and invention at our core, Qualcomm has played a critical role in driving the evolution of the mobile industry. The NXP acquisition accelerates our strategy to extend our leading mobile technology into robust new opportunities, where we will be well positioned to lead by delivering integrated semiconductor solutions at scale.

"Our companies both have substantial expertise in delivering industry-leading solutions to our global customers, built upon a shared commitment to technology innovation, focused R&D investments and strong financial and operational discipline."

Rick Clemmer, NXP's CEO, added: "The combination of Qualcomm and NXP will bring together all technologies required to realize our vision of secure connections for the smarter world, combining advanced computing and ubiquitous connectivity with security and high performance mixed-signal solutions including microcontrollers.

"Jointly we will be able to provide more complete solutions which will allow us to further enhance our leadership positions, and expand the already strong partnerships with our broad customer base, especially in automotive, consumer and industrial IoT and device level security."

Qualcomm, best known for making the processors used in the vast majority of Android and Windows Phone devices, is allegedly working on a 24-core 64-bit server chip.

The datacentre-bound processor is based on a version of the same ARM architecture underlying Qualcomm's smartphone processors - a significant development given that server processors are usually based on the x86 architecture or long-standing proprietary RISC designs, such as Oracle's Sparc.

Meanwhile, the final version of Qualcomm's server processor will allegedly have even more cores and can be used in multiprocessor servers. Making processors destined for the datacentre is a significant departure for a company best known for its mobile processors and wireless communication chips.

Allegedly due for release in early 2016, Qualcomm's unnamed server processor may beat AMD's delayed Opteron A1100 to market.

The A1100 is AMD's first ARM-based processor and was originally due to be on sale now, but is currently only available as part of a developer's kit. There's no word about operating system support, but Ubuntu and FreeBSD, among others, are already available for other ARM-based processors.

Given their novelty, few businesses are known to use ARM server processors in their datacentres. PayPal is apparently one of them, using ARM-based processors from British company Applied Micro.

Three and Vodafone have purchased some of Qualcomm's L-Band spectrum to boost coverage of their respective 4G networks around the UK.

Qualcomm said the L-Band spectrum has been approved for 4G use by the EU and can be used "for Supplemental Downlink, helping mobile network operators meet the global demand for increased mobile data traffic."

Reports suggest that the two companies paid 200 million for the extra 4G bandwidth, although neither company has confirmed how much they spent on the infrastructure improvements.

Ofcom will now need to conduct a review into the proposed purchase before Vodafone takes over Qualcomm's share of the 20MHz spectrum and Three takes the remaining 20MHz. It is unlikely that either company will be able to use the spectrum until late in 2016, because their equipment and devices will need to be upgraded in order to work.

A Three spokesperson confirmed the company had bid for spectrum held by Qualcomm, but wouldn't reveal any further details until Ofcom's review has been completed and the sale granted.

Vodafone commented: "L-Band will complement Vodafone's existing low frequency 800MHz spectrum which travels further and penetrates better through walls than other higher frequency 4G signals.

"Over time, Vodafone intends to combine the spectrum with 800MHz using a new technology called 4G+, also referred to as Carrier Aggregation, to deliver theoretical peak download speeds up to three times faster than standard 4G."

Qualcom decided to sell its L-Band spectrum back in June, but it's not known if other telecoms companies bid for the spectrum.

Mobile World Congress (MWC) has brought some exciting new technology to the fore. We've seen innovation and progress on consumer-line phones, the silicon that powers them, and everything in between. Here's everything you need to know about the important stuff launched at MWC this year.

Samsung announces the Galaxy S5 specs and release date

The world will get its hands on the next generation of Samsung's flagship Galaxy S series on 11 April. With a bigger screen, faster processor, sharper camera, and PayPal-enabled fingerprint scanner, Samsung hopes the S5 can continue where its predecessors left off. IT Pro checked out its specs and spent some hands-on time with the device.

Galaxy Gear 2 smartwatch dumps Android for Tizen OS

Samsung is releasing a revised version of its Gear smartwatch just months after its initial flop. It hopes that a heart rate monitor, and improved components will make the Gear 2 and the Gear Neo successful. Most interesting of all? The watches don't even run Android. They use Tizen.

Nokia X Android smartphone family breaks cover

Nokia announced a trio of low-cost devices for developing markets: the Nokia X, X+, and XL. The three run a forked version of Android resembling Windows Phone 8 with support for Microsoft apps. IT Pro took a look at the details and liked what we saw.

Facebook chief sets out vision to grant world internet access

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about his strategy to connect the world through Internet.org. He and a consortium of other tech companies claim bringing internet access to developing markets could create 100 million jobs. IT Pro's guest editor Brendon Petsch remained sceptical, asking, "Is this a philanthropic project or a money-making exercise for Facebook?"

Blackphone emerges from the shadows

IT Pro fought the crowds around the Blackphone stand to get a look at the small smartphone making a splash with its privacy-first design. Every part of this custom version of Android works toward protecting your data.

Mozilla launches 15 Firefox OS smartphone

Mozilla revealed a Firefox OS smartphone with a microscopic price point of 15. The device can perform basic smartphone tasks. It will launch in 12 new markets in Africa and Asia. In contrast, Mozilla started talking about "Flame," its high-end reference device meant to demonstrate Firefox OS with premium hardware.

Intel unveils 2014 Atom chip line-up

Intel continues its struggle against ARM chips with two new processors. Merrifield and Moorefield boast improved performance, 4G, low-powered sensors, and high-resolution-screen support. Keep an eye out for them in late 2014.

Qualcomm showcases 10-inch 4K tablet

Chip maker Qualcomm showed off a 10-inch reference tablet with a 3840 x 2160 4K display powered by its Snapdragon 805 processor. The manufacturer wants phone makers to start using similar "Ultra HD" screens in late 2014.

HP unveils ElitePad 1000 tablet

HP took the veil off the ElitePad 1000 G2, its latest Windows slate for businesses. It's one of the thinnest tablets the company has ever made at 9.2mm thick. Business users will appreciate its repairable battery, display, webcam, and system board. IT Pro got some hands-on time and was impressed.

IBM demos Watson customer retail experience

IBM demonstrated potential consumer uses for Watson, its cloud-based service. It claims Watson can help online shoppers find more information about their queries and increase retailers' sales.

European Commission wants 5G plan in place by 2015

European Commission vice president Neelie Kroes spoke at Mobile World Congress about the need for governments and private companies to work together to bring 5G networks to Europe and the world. She said the network would form a critical part of a connected society.

Qualcomm has developed a 10in reference tablet that uses a 4K (3840 x 2160) display, as the chipmaker pushes for the adoption of the Ultra HD standard.

The tablet is powered by Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 805 processor - a quad-core chip with a clock speed of up to 2.5GHz. This is the first commericial chip to support the HEVC (H.265) decode, which provides 40 per cent better compression than the commonly used H.264 standard. Currently, 30 mins of 4K video will take up 110GB of storage. However, when compressed with H.265, Qualcomm is expecting a 2 hour movie to be 40GB in size.

In terms of battery life, Qualcomm claims using a 4K display will be on-par with full HD screens as the size of the backlit on devices will remain the same.

The latest Adreno 420 GPU is 15 per cent more power efficient than the pervious generation, which should also help minimise power consumption.

The reference device will not be commercialised by Qualcomm, but the chipmaker believes OEM partners could bring devices to market towards the end of 2014. There are other barriers to adoption, though, which need to be addressed including the lack of 4K content, the need for end users to have a high-speed internet connection for streaming and the requirement for more on-board storage on devices. But it is possible these could be resolved before the end of 2014.

Panasonic launched a 20in 4K tablet at CES, but Qualcomm's reference device marks the first time the technology has been shown off in a more portable form factor.

Check out the demo of the Qualcomm 4K tablet below:

Intel is trying to woo tablet manufacturers to use its Atoms chips by providing a single modem that is compatible with most global 4G networks.

The Intel XMM 7160 modem supports 15 of the world's 40+ 4G bands, allowing a single configuration to operate across major markets in Asia, Europe and the US.

"[With the XMM 7160] manufacturers of devices can serve the global market with a single global skew or small number of skews between one and three," explained Thomas Lindner, senior director of marketing & product planning at Intel, during the launch.

The modem is designed primarily for use within tablets, and is now shipping in the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 across Europe and Asia. Intel also expects the modem to be built-into Ultrabooks and 2-in-1 devices going forward.

Despite providing high-speed internet connectivity, 4G has caused huge fragmentation issues in the wireless space.

The emergence of 40+ 4G (LTE) bands worldwide has created a developmental and logistical nightmare for device manufacturers as they have switch chipsets depending on different regions. In comparison, legacy connectivity such as 2G had four bands and 3G had five bands.

Despite Intel touting the advantage of using the XMM 7160, it may not be enough to trigger mass adoption of Atom-based processors.

Qualcomm has been working hard to solve 4G fragmentation issues and its current Snapdragon series supports up to 10 bands. The firm has also built 4G directly onto chips and this makes them small enough to be included in smartphones as well as tablets. Qualcomm's chips are currently found in most high-end smartphones including prominent devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy S4 and Sony Xperia Z1.

Intel has not revealed when it will launch Atom chips with 4G built-in, but they are on the roadmap. The firm has also kept quiet about plans to deploy Software-Defined-Radio technology - a platform that should allow one chip to work globally by configuring software.

Despite its perceived sluggishness to enter the mobile space, Lindner claimed that Intel is entering the 4G market "just as it's about to take off".

There are 166 million 4G subscribers in 2013 and this is expected to grow to over 1 billion in 2017, he added.

The general consensus is that the once-premier event has lost its shine as there were a lack of big product launches.

Instead companies focused on unveiling technology they plan to use inside flagship products. With Qualcomm heading the event, mobile processors took centre stage, closely followed by 4K Ultra HD display technology. Here's our take on what we learnt at CES 2013.

Mobile chip influx

All the key players launched flagship chipsets, bidding to outdo each other. Nvidia set the tone with its Tegra 4 announcement. The US chip firm claimed that its processor, packing 72 GPUs is the "fastest processor in the world", despite not actually giving any details on key specifications such as clock speed.

Intel and Qualcomm countered with the quad-core "Bay Trail" and Snapdragon 800 launches respectively. Qualcomm promised a 75 per cent increase in performance over its disappointing S4 Pro range.

But the Intel chips are lining up to be even more exciting as the vendor has already proved it can produce powerful and efficient mobile SOCs using x86 technology to rival ARM designs.

However, it was Samsung that stole the show with the announcement of an 8-core chip, using ARM's big.LITTLE implementation.

The chipset will have four Cortex-A7 processors for lightweight tasks and four Cortex-A15 processors to tackle resource-hungry activities such as HD streaming and gaming.

We're likely to see these chips being launched in flagship devices at MWC and the announcements have certainly whetted our appetite.

THAT Qualcomm keynote

It was somewhat of a surprise when Qualcomm was announced as the headline act given that the chipmaker is not really a consumer-facing brand. However, it was yet another indicator as to where the technology industry is moving - if you needed any reminding and that is to mobile. What went before our eyes was 90 mins of car crash the opening act was particularly cringeworthy, with 20-something year old actors pretending to be hipster teenagers.

And then there was the supporting cast. Paul Jacobs CEO of Qualcomm was on stage, but was flanked by all manner or celebrities and industry colleagues.

Most notable was the cameo of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who galloped into the very keynote he had snubbed. Perhaps he realised just how important CES could be to Microsoft, especially as many of its OEM partners were launching Windows 8/RT devices there.

The full Qualcomm supporting cast included director Guillermo Del Toro, actress Alice Eve, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Maroon 5, an electric Rolls Royce and - bizarrely - Sesame Street's Big Bird, who is still in the job thanks to President Obama.

Still it got everybody talking about Qualcomm, and will no doubt live long in the memory.

Windows OS still prominent

There were many tilting and twisting hybrid devices on offer from firms such as Lenovo. However, the tablet that caught our eye was the rather simple Asus Vivo Tab Smart.

So what's so special about this tablet? Simple, the 399 price of this full Windows 8 device makes it the same price as the less functional Windows RT device. It could be one of the best value Windows 8 devices on the market in 2013.

Sony takes a step back from the cliff

Xperia Z

Although this looks like a capable high-end 5in device, Sony has its work cut out as Samsung is set to launch its highly-anticipated Galaxy S4 in the coming months. RIM is also planning a long-overdue launch of its BB10 range at the end of January, and of course there's the problem of convincing users to ditch their iPhones, which is proving to be tough indeed.

3D is dead, long-live 4K

Instead firms have taken to the idea of promoting 4K (Ultra HD) technology. Although mainly showcased in TVs there were some interesting concepts on show such as the Panasonic 4K tablet.

We feel that 4K looks promising, but there is still a long way to go before it becomes mainstream. There is a lack of content and pricing is considerably higher than full-HD.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer provided the surprise moment of CES 2013 so far when he burst on stage during a presentation by Qualcomm chief Paul Jacobs.

The Microsoft CEO provided a short cameo to promote the Windows RT and Windows Phone devices powered by Qualcomm chips, and also gave an update on these platforms.

Windows tablets are the only tablets in the world with Office.

Despite getting off to a slow start, the Windows Store appears to be gaining momentum and now has a total of 17,367 apps. This is still behind Android and iOS which have hundreds of thousands available.

"There are now 4x the number of applications than we had on launch. [There were] 10,000 apps added in the last month alone," he told attendees.

Despite the lack of legacy application support, Ballmer claimed the hybrid devices running Windows RT, such as the Samsung Ativ, are able to fulfil the requirements of business users.

Interestingly, Ballmer emphatically declared that, "Windows tablets are the only tablets in the world with Office."

There have been rumours that Office for iPad is due to launch imminently, but with Office being one of the key differentiates between newly-launched Windows RT devices and the iPad, it appears Microsoft is keen to hold onto this advantage for as long as possible.

Meanwhile, on the topic of Windows Phones, Ballmer didn't provide any concrete figures, but suggested the OS is gaining traction in the market.

"In November we reported that sales of Windows Phones were 4x greater than during the same time in 2011. During the week of Christmas we were running at 5x the number [on the previous year]," he added.

With Microsoft keen to make an impact in the mobile market and Intel shunning the Windows Phone OS in favour of Android, Redmond is relying on Qualcomm as its main partner in the smartphone space.

This has been the first year Microsoft has not given a keynote at CES. Ironically, this year is being dominated by products running the Windows RT and Windows 8 OS, so its unsurprising that Ballmer made an appearance to capitalise on this.

Qualcomm is the latest chip vendor to take the wraps off next-generation mobile processors, with the firm laying down the gauntlet with its Snapdragon 600 and 800 offerings.

Unlike Nvidia which withheld key specifications, Qualcomm provided detailed information about its forthcoming processors.

Key specifications of the flagship Snapdragon 800 include a quad-core layout with clock speeds of up to 2.3GHz per core. Qualcomm has packed in an Adreno 330 GPU, which the firm claims offers 2 times the compute performance of the Adreno 320.

Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm, claimed the 800 processor will perform 75 per cent better than the S4 Pro chip, although we're not too excited yet as the S4 Pro placed bottom in the IT Pro smartphone group test.

Notably, the firm has also integrated 4G connectivity into the SoC design something which main rival Nvidia failed to do with the launch of the Tegra 4.

The Snapdragon 800 will be able to offer mobile data transfer rates of up to 150 Mbps - fast enough to comfortably stream full HD content on the move.

Qualcomm is also debuting its wireless 802.11ac technology, which Jacobs claimed will help to provide improved Wi-Fi connectivity and speeds of up to 1 Gbps.

UltraHD 4K resolution (4096 2304), the next big display technology, will also be supported and Qualcomm has built in dual-image signal processors to allow users to take 3D photos.

Meanwhile, the mid-range 600 series will boast quad-core CPUs running at a slightly slower clock speed of up to 1.9GHz. The 600 range will also pack the Adreno 320 GPU. Although this chip will lack the integrated LTE connectivity, an overall performance enhancement of 40 per cent is expected when compared to the S4 Pro chip.

Jacobs emphasised the importance of the mobile market, claiming that devices are at the centre of everything Qualcomm does.

"There are more than 6.4 billion mobile connections worldwide. Pretty soon mobile connections are going to outnumber us," he told attendees at CES 2013.

"Almost a million new smartphone users are added everyday. That's more than the double the number of babies born worldwide (371k). Mobile is fuelling economic growth, its transforming industries and redefining the way that we live."

Snapdragon processors are currently found in over 500 devices, and Jacobs noted that there are 400 more in the works.

Devices with Snapdragon 600 are expected to start shipping in the second quarter and the 800 series is expected to be seen in mid-2013.

Intel has lifted the lid on a new manufacturing technology that it claims will allow it to launch a new generation of chips for smartphones and tablets.

The world's largest chipmaker dominates the PC industry but has been slow to adapt its processors for mobile gadgets that depend on batteries and demand power efficiency.

At an industry conference in San Francisco on Monday, Intel reported on the progress of its technology for making SoCs, or "systems-on-a-chip" with features measuring 22 nanometers.

"Intel's 22 nm SoC technology will be ready for high volume manufacturing in 2013," Intel said in a copy of the presentation.

Intel's current mobile SoCs are manufactured at 32 nm, while Qualcomm makes its top-end SoCs at 28 nm and Nvidia uses 40 nm technology. Manufacturing chips with smaller features allows for better performance and power efficiency.

Intel already makes PC processors at 22 nm, but since SoCs pack more features onto one piece of silicon, manufacturing them at 22 nm is more complicated, said Patrick Moorhead, of Moor Insights & Analysis.

"They (Intel) have all the right ingredients to make a very competitive mobile chip but we won't know if they do until 2013," Moorhead said.

While Intel's industry lead in manufacturing technology is well established, competitors and many on Wall Street say the chipmaker's mobile SoC designs do not stand up to SoCs designed by Qualcomm, Apple and others with technology licensed from Britain's ARM Holdings

As the mobile computing wars heat up, chipmakers that supply the crucial components inside smartphones and tablets aim to grab more of the glory.

Not content to remain in the shadows of hot consumer brands like Apple or Samsung, chipmakers - including Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia - want consumers to get to know the processors that power their mobile devices and build brand loyalty in the process.

Intel is leading the charge by extending its hugely successful "Intel Inside" marketing campaign beyond personal computers. Launched in 1991, "Intel Inside" stickers turned commodity electronic components into premium products, and eventually became ubiquitous on laptops.

This year, the Intel Inside logo has appeared on the backs of smartphones launched in the United Kingdom, India and Russia.

"Without a doubt, my goal would be to have consumers walk into stores and have Intel Inside as a key driver of which phone or tablet they choose, just like we've done in the PC space," said Brian Fravel, Intel's head of branding.

The world's top chipmaker dominates the PC market but lags smaller competitors in the fast-growing mobile industry. Intel is flexing its branding muscle to try to catch up.

It remains to be seen how many handset manufacturers agree to put the Intel Inside logo on their devices. For emerging smartphone brands, with little name recognition of their own, partnering with Intel may be a "no brainer." At the other extreme, Apple refuses to share branding with any of its suppliers.

That's not an easy thing to do in the mobile space where people aren't accustomed to it.

The highest-profile smartphone maker so far to use Intel's branding is Google's Motorola Mobility, which launched the Razr i in London on 18 September.

Until now, space on most smartphones has been reserved for the vendor, such as Apple or Samsung, and carriers like Verizon Wireless.

Providers of operating systems, such as Google's Android, also covet consumer loyalty - their logos sometimes appear briefly on screens when devices are turned on.

A logo-happy approach to smartphones and tablets, though, would run the risk of confusing consumers with what some experts call the NASCAR effect.

As a rule, it's seen as a good idea to add extra branding to products only when the additional brand strongly conveys a quality that the handset maker's own brand lacks.

"Can you generate end-user demand for your processors? That's what they're all looking at, and that's not an easy thing to do in the mobile space where people aren't accustomed to it," said Jack Gold, a tech industry analyst at J. Gold Associates.

Part of the reason the Intel Inside campaign has been unrivaled in the chip industry is that no one else can match Intel's $2.1 billion annual budget for advertising and marketing. Intel helps pay for the PC makers' own ads, as long as they include Intel Inside.

A TV ad promoting a phone launched by Orange in the United Kingdom in February features a supersonic car driven by a dark-clad pilot whose clothes are emblazoned with Intel Inside.

Intel surveyed customers who bought Orange's phone.

"It wasn't as though these were tech-savvy people who were reading all the benchmarks. They said Intel Inside meant performance to them," Intel's Fravel said.

Along with Qualcomm, Samsung is a major producer of mobile processors, most of which it manufactures on behalf of Apple's iPads and iPhones. Texas Instruments and Broadcom also make mobile processors, but do not advertise much to consumers.

Since the 1990s, Qualcomm has been a major player in the mobile chip industry. For most of that time, advertising has been an afterthought for the San Diego-based company.

Most of Qualcomm's marketing has been directed at a specific category of tech enthusiasts keenly interested in the components used in their devices. It has taken the form of YouTube videos, Internet ads and social media instead of TV commercials and other pricey campaigns.

In October, Qualcomm is set to start a new branding campaign, coinciding with the launch of tablets and other devices using its chips and Microsoft's next-generation Windows platform.

As part of the drive, Qualcomm will share advertising with manufacturers to showcase features of its chips, said Tim McDonough, a Qualcomm vice president responsible for marketing the company's Snapdragon mobile processors.

You'll start to see the Snapdragon brand appearing in a lot more places.

"You'll start to see the Snapdragon brand appearing in a lot more places. But the key is having it appear in places where it has value to the user as a starting point. Right now, the consumer is saying, 'I'm ready for my next phone, I'm not sure what to buy, and I need some help,'" McDonough said, in a telephone interview.

McDonough would not say how much Qualcomm plans to spend on advertising to counter Intel, which last year even paid hit Korean pop group Girls' Generation for TV ads and a single written for Intel.

Signaling its growing interest in creating brand awareness, Qualcomm renamed a professional football venue in San Diego "Snapdragon Stadium" for a few days last year.

And suggesting Qualcomm sees the PC industry as a model for its marketing, it hired a new chief marketing officer, Anand Chandrasekher, a veteran Intel senior executive, in August.

As much smaller Nvidia transitions to the mobile market, it aims to capitalize on game enthusiasts who are passionate about its PC graphics chips. Its well-oiled marketing department hosts tournaments and aggressively interacts with industry pundits.

Last year, Nvidia spent just $9.5 million on advertising, a sum that can't buy anything close to Intel's broad recognition. But it can help win loyalty from a narrow but influential group of young men.

"Intel spends way more money branding Intel Inside, but we'll go to events, and gamers will come up to us with the Nvidia logo tattooed on their body, shaved on their head," said Ujesh Desai, Nvidia's vice president of corporate marketing.

Leveraging its popularity with game fans, Nvidia has created Tegra Zone, a collection of games optimized to work better on mobile devices using Nvidia's Tegra processors. Ads for tablets like Google's Nexus 7 boast of Nvidia's punchy graphics.

"Our tack doesn't start with, 'How much are we going to pay you so you put our logo on there?' Our tack is more, 'Here's how we can partner with you so we can create a great experience,'" Desai said.

With stagnant PC sales, executives see mobile gadgets as the future. Annual sales of processors used in smartphones and tablets could hit $25 billion by 2016, compared with $9 billion last year, according to market research firm Strategy Analytics.

As formidable as the Intel Inside brand may be, extending it from PCs to a new world of smartphones and tablets has risks.

Competition in mobile is fierce. If Intel fails to deliver the top performance that people associate with "Intel Inside," the chipmaker could damage its prized image.

"Putting an ingredient brand on the outside of your product should be like driving a sports car, something you want people to see you do because it's better," said Andy Smith, a former Intel employee who was involved with the "Intel Inside" campaign in the late 1990s. "But if the reality is that there's nothing great about the chips, then it's going to be hard for them to repeat it."

Qualcomm has confirmed demand for its 28nm chips is outstripping supply, which analysts claim could delay the launch of the iPhone 5.

The company's 28nm Snapdragon processor is featured in devices from HTC and ASUS. It has been widely-tipped to make an appearance in the next iteration of Apple's iPhone and Microsoft's highly-anticipated Windows tablet device.

We cannot secure enough supply to meet demand.

However, with demand for tablet and smartphone devices soaring, the chip is now in short supply and is expected to remain so until the end of the year.

"Although manufacturing yields are progressing per expectation, there is a shortage of 28nm [products]," confimed Qualcomm's CEO, Paul Jacobs, during a conference call with analysts.

"At this stage, we cannot secure enough supply to meet the increasing demand we are experiencing [and] we're working closely with our partners to bring additional capacity online."

Meanwhile, Qualcomm's executive vice president, Steven Mollenkopf, said the situation has prompted some OEM partners to source alternatives.

"We have [tried] to spread the supply across all of the customers as best we can, and I think everyone is dealing with this issue," he said.

"We're really focused on getting additional supply throughout the year."

According to statement from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, published by MarketWatch, the shortage could delay the launch of the Apple iPhone 5.

"QCOM's supply issue likely pushes the launch of the iPhone to October...[which]is irrelevant, as long as the iPhone 5 upgrade is compelling," said Munster.

Qualcomm is set to power Windows 8 laptops with its S4 Snapdragon quad-core chip, as it looks expand its portfolio beyond smartphones and tablets.

Rob Chandhok, senior vice president at Qualcomm, claimed that the S4 Snapdragon quad-core chip will allow manufacturers to make laptops that are "much lighter" than Intel-based Ultrabooks.

"The S4 chips will enable smaller laptops with high-resolution screens, longer battery life and always-on connectivity," Chandhok told PC World in an interview.

Any entrant to one of Intel's core markets will be perceived as a threat, let alone one as large as Qualcomm.

The Snapdragon processors were expected to feature in Windows 8 tablets, but their emergence in laptops is likely to intensify competition in an already converging market.

Qualcomm is hoping its system-on-a-chip architecture will help differentiate its devices. S4 chips will have an integrated modem, so users are expected to be provided with 4G connectivity. This could attract business users who consume increasing amounts of content on the move.

S4 powered laptops are also likely to bring a significant increase in battery life, something that has generally been the Achilles heel of X-86-based Intel devices.

Qualcomm was contacted for more information regarding form factors, pricing and release dates, but the firm has yet to respond.

Scott Bicheno, senior analyst , wireless smartphone at Strategy Analytics told IT Pro that competition in the mobile devices market is set to increase.

"Any entrant to one of Intel's core markets will be perceived internally as a threat, let alone one as large as Qualcomm," he said.

"WoA (Windows on ARM) promises enhancements such as longer battery life and always on' connectivity. However, Intel will feel in a strong position as the dominant incumbent with an established OEM ecosystem and full support for legacy Windows apps."

Bicheno added that the latest ARM-based chips have sufficient processing and graphics power to handle most business tasks, but lack of support for legacy apps could hinder adoption.

"There is no reason why chipsets like the Snapdragon S4 can't meet the majority of business needs," he continued.

"The lack of support for legacy Windows apps on WoA is more likely to deter business users from using these devices. Microsoft has said the next version of Office will be WoA-compatible, but many other key pieces of software will need to be re-written for devices running Windows 8 on ARM-based SoCs."

The Snapdragon devices are likely to go head-to-head with second generation Ultrabooks later this year. The Ultrabooks will ship with Intel's Ivy Bridge architecture and it will be interesting to see the performance to battery life ratio of the two chipsets.

This move from Qualcomm comes after Intel announced plans to make a concerted push into the smartphone and tablet market at CES. The chipmaker showcased its Intel Atom Medfield chips that will be used in some forthcoming smartphone releases, including the Orange Santa Clara.

It also remains to be seen whether NVIDIA will look to counter Qualcomm by throwing its hat into the laptop market. NVIDIA was the first manufacturer to provide a quad-core chip for use within tablets. Its Tegra 3 chipset was used in the Asus Transformer Prime tablet, which shipped at the start of this year.

Interestingly, in early tests of the dual-core S4 have been benchmarking higher than the quad-core Tegra 3. This bodes well for the quad-core version of the chip.

Qualcomm has revealed record revenue for the second financial quarter of 2011 at $3.88 billion (2.34 billion) an increase of 46 per cent year-on-year over results from this time last year.

The results are above predicted figures released by the company in January of $3.45 billion to $3.75 billion.

An increased demand in smartphone and tablet devices in the current market is cited as reason for its success, as more and more manufacturers turn to Qualcomm hardware to power their products.

Chip sales alone came in at $1.96 billion, whilst licensing revenue for the company's hardware also played a significant factor, with increases in this sector of nearly $700 million including a $410 million license settlement with Panasonic.

When you consider most new devices launched onto the market at the moment are either powered by Qualcomm or ARM hardware, it's no surprise they're doing so well. In particular the overall market trend towards 3G smartphones, requiring more advanced hardware, has been linked to the increased demand for Qualcomm products and the resulting high revenue.

Qualcomm's income also rose by 38 per cent over last year to $1.07 billion (647 million), along with profits being up 29 per cent at $999 million (604 million).

The company said it expected these successes to continue. Dr Paul E. Jacobs, chairman and chief executive (CEO) of Qualcomm, said: "We are pleased to report record quarterly revenues, and we are raising our revenue and earnings guidance for the year as the demand for smartphones across an array of geographies and tiers continues to grow."

Mobile chip maker Qualcomm has started shipping its first ever dual-core Snapdragon processors to smartphone manufacturers, the company announced at the Computex show in Taiwan today.

The third-generation of the ARM-based Snapdragon has two Scorpion application processor cores running at up to 1.2GHz, and features integrated GPS, a GPU with on-board 2D/3D acceleration for Open GL 2.0 and Open VG 1.1, full HD video encoding and decoding, a dedicated low-power audio engine and support for 24-bit 1280 x 800-pixel WXGA displays.

Two variants of the chipset will be available the MSM8260, which supports HSPA+, and the MSM8660, which has dual-mode HSPA+ and 1xEV-DO Rev B support.

In targeting high-end smartphones and other mobile form factors, the Qualcomm chips will be going up against rival platforms from Broadcom, Intel, Nvidia, Marvell and Texas Instruments in a rapidly expanding and highly lucrative market segment.

The original 1GHz Snapdragon has proved highly popular since first appearing in Toshiba's TG01 smartphone last year. According to Qualcomm, Snapdragon chipsets are currently found in more than 140 devices, including the Google Nexus One, HTC Desire and Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 smartphones and the soon to be released in the UK Dell Streak 5 Android tablet.

Qualcomm's higher-spec 1.3GHz single core variation launched at the start of the year is classed as the second-generation Snapdragon, with today's announcement being the third. Qualcomm says it's also working on a more powerful version of the dual-core chip to be called the QSD8672, which will see each of the two cores clocking speeds of up to 1.5GHz when it appears later this year.

Qualcomm is currently shipping engineering samples of the new chipsets to smartphone makers. It typically takes around half a year from that point for the first end products to appear. That means high-powered smartphones with the latest Snapdragon silicon should start appearing just in time for Christmas.

As more and more netbook makers turn their devices into laptops, Qualcomm is looking in a different direction to "smartbooks".

Qualcomm's is set to unveil its "vision" of mobile computers that are part smartphone and part netbook at Computex this week, with the devices hitting stores by autumn 2009. The smartbooks will feature Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset, which will feature in a series of other mobile devices at the show in Taipei.

"Consumers are looking for devices that offer more instantaneous connectivity, greater mobile performance and intuitive usability than ever before," said Luis Pineda, senior vice president of marketing and product management at Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, in a statement.

"Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform is addressing those needs by enabling smartphones that break new ground in mobile capability, and establishing this new category of smartbooks - devices which deliver a unique mobile user experience different from anything else on the market today," he added.

Qualcomm described Smartbooks as devices that "bridge the functional divide between smartphones and laptops." They run a mobile operating system on a larger form computer, such as a netbook, but will also include touchscreen tablet computers.

Like most smartphones and netbooks, they will connect to 3G, WiFi and GPS networks easily, but Qualcomm is promising all day power from a single charge on active use, and all week on standby. The devices will be under two pounds (907g) in weight and less than 20mm thick, Qualcomm claimed.

The smartbooks may not be arriving until fall of this year, but they already have their own dedicated website, complete with enthusiastic video here.

Motorola has announced that Sanjay Jha, the former chief operating officer of mobile phone chip maker Qualcomm hs been hired as co-chief executive of its struggling mobile phone business.

The appointment comes ahead of a planned spin-off of the phone business into a separate company, and Jha will share the role with current chief executive Greg Brown.

Motorola has been looking for a new chief for its mobile phone unit since early this year. Some investors had been worried that the company was having trouble attracting strong candidates.

The company has struggled with market share losses in the mobile phone unit due to a lack of advanced phones or a strong follow-up to its once-lauded Razr V3 phone.

Jha, 45, had worked at wireless chip supplier Qualcomm since 1994.

Chip makers Broadcom and Qualcomm sparred in an American appeals court yesterday over patents used to make mobile phones that offer web-access and other multimedia features.

Qualcomm was ordered last year to stop selling phones with WCDMA chips by January 2009 because they infringe on three Broadcom patents and was barred from seeking new customers.

The ruling issued in the US District Court for Northern California also required Qualcomm to pay royalties to Broadcom for the chips it sells during the "sunset period."

Two of the three judges hearing the case, Sharon Prost and Richard Linn, appeared skeptical of at least some of Qualcomm's arguments that the lower court erred in ruling that Qualcomm infringed; erred in barring it from selling its products and erred in instructing the jury.

"So what is the problem here?" said Prost during Qualcomm lawyer Evan Chesler's argument on the injunction.

"That's not wrong," said Linn in response to one of Chesler's points on jury instruction.

WCDMA mobile wireless technology provides much higher data speeds to mobile and portable wireless devices than most North American networks.

The two companies also argued before the same court on Tuesday in a case that could result in BlackBerries and other advanced mobile phones being banned for US sale.

At issue is a patent on technology that helps cell phone chips use less power. The US International Trade Commission ruled last year that Broadcom owns the patent and that Qualcomm is wrongly selling chips for telephones that contain the technology.

US mobile provider Qualcomm said has bought 40 MHz of UK spectrum at a cost of 8.3 million.

Qualcomm said it would use the chunk of 1.4 GHz L-band radio spectrum, suitable broadband speed wireless access, mobile television or satellite radio to develop new technologies.

"Winning this licence creates an opportunity for Qualcomm to explore emerging business models and advanced mobile technologies," said John Caterer, UK managing director for Qualcomm Europe.

The firm wants to work with operators looking to launch new services, although it would not elaborate on what these might be.

"If we can help the market to harness this potential, we will see additional opportunities for service providers using a variety of technologies. This will ultimately benefit consumers, offering them high quality services and a range of creative applications."

The use of peer-to-peer networking over mobile networks, improved capacity and in-building coverage and multimedia broadcasting could be potential areas of development, according to Andrew Gilbert, executive vice president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm Internet Services, MediaFLO Technologies and Qualcomm Europe. But he added: "We are not on a strict timetable."

The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom opened the bidding for its fifth award of spectrum in the L-Band (1452-1492 MHz) in March, as part of its efforts to fuel wireless technology innovation in the UK.