Qualcomm lines up 30 Snapdragon gadgets

More than 30 products using Qualcomm's next-generation Snapdragon chipset are already in the pipeline, the chipmaker has revealed.

The company said in a web conference on Thursday that the 3G chipset, which incorporates graphics capabilities as well as a CPU, will enable low-power, always-on devices. These are hybrid laptop-cum-smartphone devices that Qualcomm has dubbed 'smartbooks'.

The Snapdragon chipset can also be used for smartphones as well as smartbooks, however, and both types of hardware are now under development, according to Qualcomm.

More than 15 companies are working on Snapdragon-based devices, including Acer, Asus, HTC, LG, Toshiba and Samsung.

A Qualcomm spokesman declined to give product specifics and launch dates but reiterated that products will launch this year.

The spokesman said that an open-source Linux OS will be used to underpin the graphical user interface on devices powered by Snapdragon, but that the GUI will be more important to the user than the operating system.