Quite interesting
As you may already have heard, mobile chip giant Qualcomm had its annual jamboree at the Science Museum in London yesterday. Not only was this one on a much larger scale than last year, but we got the CEO himself - Paul Jacobs - this time.
His presentation was mainly an overview of Qualcomm's activities with a short Q&A after. This year is Qualcomm's 25th anniversary and Jacobs took the opportunity to predict that the mobile Internet will have a far greater impact than the fixed Internet has.
A couple of highlights of his presentation were: the confirmation of the investment Qualcomm is making in its non-back lit colour display technology - Mirasol - by building a couple of dedicated fabs in Taiwan. There was also a nice demo using augmented reality to select a digital photo frame to send a photo to by via a smartphone screen and camera.
During the Q&A we asked what happened to the ARM-based mini-notebooks Qualcomm has been bigging up for the past couple of years. Jacobs answered that tablets have come to the fore instead, but that they're still consistent with that vision - always-on, connected, mobile computing - just without the keyboard. He conceded that the Apple iPad has "tilted the market".
Walking round the exhibition after the keynote, we chatted to a few execs and got hold of a Mirasol device, all of which you can see video clips of below. We also chatted to a few people about the launch of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 mobile OS - for which Qualcomm is a launch partner - and the general consensus was that the launch day would be 11 October.
