Open for business
It's looking increasingly like the future of mobile telephony is open source. Of course Microsoft, with its newly re-branded Windows Phone OS would beg to differ, but the huge momentum around Google's Android and the fact that Nokia-owned Symbian is now open source, means that the smart money is now in that direction.
At the same time, as has has been extensively reported on HEXUS.channel, there is an almighty tussle developing between current and future makers of the chips that go inside mobile phones as the ARM ecosystem flexes its muscles and Intel attempts to complicate matters.
So it makes sense for a chip maker to position itself strongly to capitalise on the growth of open source in the mobile space, and that's exactly what Qualcomm is hoping to do with the creation of the Qualcomm Innovation Center (QuIC), which is a wholly owned subsidiary.
It will be headed up by Rob Chandhok, who is currently SVP of software strategy for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. "Open source and community-driven software development is becoming increasingly important to the wireless industry, and QuIC is committed to meaningful participation in these development efforts." said Chandhok.
"To fulfill this commitment and to provide focus to this effort, Qualcomm has transferred experienced software engineers to QuIC. These engineers will focus on such important open source initiatives as Linux and Webkit, and on open source operating systems such as Symbian, Android and Chrome."
One possible reason for Qualcomm to put its open source efforts into a self-contained subsidiary may be the legal minefield that is IP protection. With the majority of its revenues coming from licence payments from the use of its patents in mobile phones, Qualcomm needs to have some way of protecting these pieces of proprietary IP while, at the same time, being nice and open source.
