The mobile internet sector has dreamed for years of a system that could automatically connect a device to any network within range, in order to gain the best cost/performance, regardless of the specific technology. While some clumsy first steps have been taken in the shape of multi-radio handsets or laptop cards, these are expensive and bulky, and so the device industry continues to explore the promise of the cognitive or adaptive radio. Intel and others have been showing prototypes of such products for some time, although the giant watered down its once influential ‘Radio Free’ vision significantly. Now Qualcomm has come from behind to show off one of the most significant real world moves towards an adaptive handset to have come from a mainstream chip firm, with the launch of its Gobi platform at last week’s CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment show.
A software defined radio (SDR) is one in which a significant number of blocks in the transmit and/or receive paths have their functionality defined by software rather than hardware, making the functions easily alterable by programming. This has the potential to allow a handset’s capabilities, including its radio frequencies and protocols, to be adapted quickly, and even on the fly using over the air updating. As the SDR evolves into its logical heir, the cognitive or adaptive radio, the real power of this technology becomes apparent, creating a device that can intelligently switch between different wireless networks, picking the most appropriate according to criteria programmed into the software, such as cost, network quality, location, urgency of message or strength of signal.
Gobi is far from delivering this whole vision, but it is a real working product that highlights the power of SDR in enabling device makers to create products that can work with multiple networks, thus benefiting from massive economies and divorcing R&D decisions from the operator’s choices of networks. The initial iteration of Gobi supports W-CDMA/HSPA and CDMA EV-DO Rev A, already promising to overcome roaming problems between the two main 3G networks, and produce improved economies of scale, particularly for the CDMA phonemakers, which are dealing with the risk of a possible decline in their market.
In future, Qualcomm says Gobi will potentially be able to support other radio technologies too, including HSPA+, LTE and future versions of the CDMA platform, plus even WiMAX. Although the company made no specific commitment to produce a WiMAX version, the fact it mentioned the possibility carries some significance, when viewed alongside other recent signs that Qualcomm may find itself, however reluctantly, forced to support 802.16e, rather than miss out on a market that shows signs of gaining volume potential.
However, strategically, Gobi can also be seen as the type of product that will make new networks like WiMAX less relevant, and therefore strengthen the cause of the established platforms and their heirs ‘ those with greater Qualcomm content of course.
Much of the enthusiasm for WiMAX has come from the internet community, which wants to extend and exploit its business models in the mobile world, and so needs to break down the traditional closed networks and walled gardens that have characterized the cellcos. This would be easier with an all-IP network that has been optimized to deliver rich internet services and which can be embedded into internet devices such as notebooks, offering a single standard to support the PC-style open access model, as Wi-Fi has already done.
However, as Mike Concannon, VP of strategic products at Qualcomm’s CDMA Technologies division, pointed out, products like Gobi provide ‘a very simple value proposition.’- notebooks could be built with a single cellular radio that will work with any network and operator, rather than being customized with specific 3G radios in the factory as they are now, and so far stronger economics would be delivered without the need for a new open network like WiMAX. For the operator, Qualcomm argues they will be able to deliver 3G services to devices that are both affordable, and fully capable of exploiting 3G data rates ‘ rather than forcing users to choose for their mobile internet experience between cheap but limited cellphones and notebooks that have strong performance, but come at a premium price if 3G is embedded as well as Wi-Fi.
Qualcomm is working with several tier one notebook manufacturers now and expects laptops with embedded Gobi to be in the market in the second quarter of 2008. Although no names were officially revealed, Hewlett-Packard was quoted in Qualcomm’s statement, with a strong implication that it would adopt Gobi, and Vodafone also came out with a statement of support, saying the chipset was ‘an important step’ in mobile broadband.
Qualcomm is providing the chips, software and the hardware reference designs for module OEMs, which then supply the PC makers. Concannon would not reveal how much the Gobi platform would cost compared to single-mode embedded radios, but said he believes the pricing will be “very competitive” with single-mode options.
The move is clearly a direct strike against Intel, whose success is so firmly built upon its vast influence over the PC industry and the chips that get embedded into most of the world’s notebooks ‘ and will step up the pressure both to get laptop WiMAX chips into PCs as quickly as possible, and to keep the prices highly competitive. It will be interesting to see how far Gobi prompts Intel to revisit the cellular or multimode laptop market ‘ its venture with Nokia to offer notebook HSPA foundered last year on conflicts of interest, but the two companies have recently seemed to recognize that they have more objectives, and enemies, in common than competitive conflicts. There will also be huge pressure on Intel to steal back Qualcomm’s march in its heartland territory by accelerating its own R&D, partnerships or acquisitions to produce its own SDR roadmap.
The new chipset also plays heavily to the business traveler by incorporating GPS ( and the name, Gobi, is derived from ‘Go and Be’, and meant to be evocative of travel and vast coverage). It has been designed from scratch for notebooks, ultra-mobile devices and consumer products, rather than being an adaptation of a mobile phone product, and so shows how Qualcomm is gradually extending out of its core markets into sectors that have been dominated by companies like Intel and Broadcom. This process was clearly seen with the digital media-oriented launch of Snapdragon a year ago, and now Qualcomm is seeking to compensate for the potential decline of its CDMA base, and of its overall royalties revenue should it be forced to adapt its IPR model, not only by moving into new markets, but by aiming to take a lead in them in innovation terms. Whether or not Gobi eventually supports WiMAX does not alter the fact that, in addition to its other daunting competitive challenges, Qualcomm is now adding Intel to the list even more specifically than before. The contrast will not be lost on the PC giant ‘ it backed away from a direct collision with Qualcomm when it sold its XScale cellphone processor business to Marvell, but now the CDMA leader is bearding it in its most well defended lair.