Qualcomm, Meeting The Needs Of Next-Generation Mobile Devices

Qualcomm (Public, NASDAQ: QCOM) is a leading chipset maker, located in San Diego, California. Qualcomm designs and produces wireless telecommunications products, such as its code division multiple access (CDMA) technologies.

Consumers worldwide demand more and more from their smartphones and tablet computers and Qualcomm is helping to fill that demand with dual-core chipsets that offer better video performance and higher screen resolutions, up to 1280 x 800 pixels.

Qualcomm produces the Snapdragon up to 1.2 GHz (MSM 8260 and MSM 8660) dual-core chipsets for smartphones and the QSD8672, 1.5 GHz chipset for smartbooks will compete with NVIDIA's, dual-core, Tegra 2 chipsets.

Qualcomm’s strengths lie in its ability to stay abreast and a bit ahead of its competitors, Texas Instruments Inc. (Public, NYSE: TXN), Infineon Tech. AG (ADR)(Public, PINK: IFNNY) purchased by Intel (Public, NASDAQ: INTC), Motorola Solutions Inc. (Public, NYSE: MSI), Broadcom Corporation (Public, NASDAQ: BRCM) and Nvidia Corp. (Public, NASDAQ: NVDA), by forging partnerships with popular consumer electronics companies, such as Apple (Public, NASDAQ: AAPL) and Dell (Public, NASDAQ: DELL) and a host of others (Samsung, LG and HTC).

Qualcomm’s future is bright indeed with its more powerful, faster, energy efficient processors and its partnership with Apple to supply the cdma chipsets for Verizon’s iPhone and potentially for the iPad 2, iPhone 5 and a slew of new Android and Windows OS smartphones and tablets coming out this year. Analyst’s state that Verizon will sell between 19 to 23 million CDMA iPhones this year alone.

Qualcomm chipsets coming out later this year will have the LTE (long-term evolution), multi-mode, 3G/4G modems, which would allow users to take full advantage of 4G wi-fi technologies. Qualcomm does well with its chips sales and a good bit of its profits are derived from the licensing of its cdma. Qualcomm anticipates sales of 775 million cdma devices for 2011.

Qualcomm’s recent acquisition of Atheros Communications, Inc. (Public, NASDAQ: ATHR), a Santa Clara, California based wireless chip and wired chip solutions provider. The acquisition of Atheros Communications gives Qualcomm synergy in the mobile market. The migration of dumbphones to smartphones and the proliferation of tablet computers, will add to Qualcomm’s profits this year and for years to come.