3GSM: Hot air - Qualcomm CEO on mobile TV in Europe

The CEO and founder of mobile chipset and intellectual property player Qualcomm has been playing up the chances of mobile TV and the US company's BREW user interface platform being used in Europe.

Speaking to journalists at the 3GSM show, Irwin Jacobs explained Qualcomm's move to launch a national US network for broadcasting moving images to mobile phones.

"We saw the broadcast technology [being used] in Korea and were surprised how fast it took off," he said. "The 700MHz band became available in the US so we purchased the rights… and got [that market] moving more rapidly."

The likely advent of mobile TV, most obviously based on DVB-H technology in Europe, has been one of the big themes of the mobile industry conference in Cannes this week.

Jacobs said Qualcomm may receive outside funds for its plans but is thinking about "spinning it out", realising its investment. Revenue would be derived even after a sell-off in the form of greater sales of TV-capable handsets underpinned by his company's CDMA technology.

While regulatory regimes, spectrum ownership and spectrum usage differ across European countries, Jacobs said he believes that as terrestrial television goes digital mobile TV will be looked at.

For content providers, it will be a chance to bring very local content to handsets and encourage phones that start to resemble remote controls to interact with TV networks.

Nokia is engaged in a DVB-H mobile TV trial in Oxford with some 500 end users and there are rumours it could try to launch networks based on giant antennae in some markets.

Qualcomm has had success in CDMA markets with its BREW environment, which is analogous to Nokia's Series 60 interface which games and application developers write to.

However, BREW has yet to make it on GSM networks - and Europe is blanketed with GSM. But Jacobs, whose company has upped its presence in Europe significantly as it sells silicon for 3G phones and datacards using W-CDMA - aka UMTS - sounded upbeat.

"We have announced further capabilities," he said, including this week's BREW uiOne offering for customised displays. "Operators are looking at BREW as a positive way to move ahead."

He added that some operators are in the "possible adopt" category while others could be labelled "thinking seriously".

Orange had been tipped as the European player most likely to have a run at BREW, headed as it was until last year by former US telco boss Sol Trujillo. Qualcomm would not be drawn on which operators look most friendly now.

A Qualcomm-based datacard allowing the use of so-called 3.5G standard HSDPA was unveiled as a likely release in the second half of this year by European customer Siemens.