Qualcomm CEO opens up

The boss of mobile chipset and patents giant Qualcomm has denied that legal disputes with rivals, most notably Nokia, and a complaint lodged against it with the European Commission are distracting the company's top management.

Paul Jacobs, who has been CEO for less than a year at Qualcomm, said: "It's not a big distraction. It's actually an opportunity for me in a way because I had visualised that when I took over I would be more open about how the licensing model works.

"The fact that our competitors made that complaint, the operators were interested in hearing our story... It's kind of funny that way."

For years Qualcomm was an outsider in Europe, its CDMA expertise pitched as the antithesis of the GSM standard that ruled the continent for more than a decade. But with the introduction of W-CDMA as the main 3G standard, Qualcomm's presence has been beefed up in the European market - and at the 3GSM show in Barcelona where Jacobs was speaking this week.

He said: "We've gone from an outsider in Europe to more of a partner. We will see a doubling of the W-CDMA market this year and half [of those handsets] will be sold in Europe."

Jacobs, son of Qualcomm founder Dr Irwin Jacobs, also gave his views on several other key subject areas.

He said multiple 3G standards will not hold back the number of laptop makers announcing integrated 3G radios. Leading laptop makers such as Dell and Lenovo have been bringing out models that include 3G or so-called 3.5G HSDPA radios.

He said: "Moore's Law is going to allow you to put all the radios you need in."

China not only is looming as the biggest mobile market but also appears to be a market that in the future will influence technology roadmaps, especially as its homegrown TD-SCDMA standard will sit alongside the other two big boys: CDMA2000 and W-CDMA.

Jacobs said: "Manufacturers will take advantage of the home market, testing features and getting scale. Qualcomm is already working with some Chinese manufacturers."

Some observers wonder how much China's own path has been forged by a reluctance to embrace standards that will see money flow to non-Chinese companies.

In a research note out this week, Ovum research director XJ Wang said: "W-CDMA and CDMA2000 handsets involve relatively high IPR royalty costs to the Chinese handset vendors who don't have a cross-licensing agreement with Qualcomm."