Qualcomm's Rob Chandhok on mobile apps, chip software integration
Qualcomm is in the middle of a core race with the likes of Nvidia on the mobile front, but the company isn't sweating the competition. Qualcomm is betting on software and tight integration with its chips as a winning formula.
On Qualcomm, the software company. I noted that most folks don't think of Qualcomm as a software player, but like Intel it develops a lot of applications. Chandhok (right) noted that Qualcomm's core business has always been about chipsets, platform and software. He deemed Qualcomm's software as a "board support package" that makes services run better on the phone with less power.
Software as a differentiator. Qualcomm's rival Nvidia has touted that it will be first to market with a quad-core mobile chip, but Chandhok didn't seem too worried. That's because he largely sees software as Qualcomm's differentiator. He explained how Qualcomm's platform builds "integrated and optimized software" for its system on a chip. "Our core software enables ways to extend the mobile application ecosystem," said Chandhok.
Handicapping the mobile OS battle. Chandhok noted that Qualcomm has an interesting view of the mobile OS game because the company works with most of them and handset makers. Qualcomm has a team dedicated to each platform---iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, Meego, WebOS and probably a few I'm forgetting. "There's room for at least five operating systems," said Chandhok. "There are different user interface metaphors. We don't know enough yet about what the perfect phone will be." When asked what mobile OS was easiest to work with, Chandhok wouldn't bite. He only said "all of our children are beautiful." Well except for Symbian. Qualcomm used to have a team dedicated to Symbian but no more.
Where's Qualcomm's focus today? Chandhok said that the company is spending a lot of time focused on integrating HTML5 on its system on a chip. The plan is to make browsers run better. Like the desktop, browser based consumer services are likely to proliferate on mobile devices. There will still be apps, but the future will be that apps will be browser apps. Why? "Economies of scale," explained Chandhok. "When's the last time you downloaded an application on the desktop. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and eBay are all accessed on a browser. You'll do that on a phone. Content and services are going to go HTML 5. You can't argue with the economics."
Mobile app-Web site blurring. This blurring will occur as HTML5 is adopted, browsers improve and caching and local storage policies change, he said. "There's an economic pressure to innovate at scale and that means a drive to the browser," said Chandhok. The trick will be to make sure the technology works in the way mobile works. For instance, you want to save power and understand how mobile cores work. "We understand the imaging and construction models of Webkit and optimize what happens for performance and power," said Chandhok. For instance, in the mobile world you want to group a series of small transactions together and offload them to less power intensive processing. On the desktop, you don't really care how many cores are working or the power that's used.
Quad core focus. Given those aforementioned points, Chandhok argued that mobile devices aren't limited by click speed. They are limited by thermal characteristics and power consumption, he said. In the end, the consumer will gravitate to the longer battery life instead of cores and clock speeds. "Battery life will be the tell," he said. "Qualcomm will ride that performance and power curve as tightly as possible."
Open source as a way to get standards. Chandhok said that Qualcomm has contributed "quite a bit to Webkit and Android." "We work in open source a lot more than people think," he added. The biggest contribution to the open source community has been Qualcomm's AllJoyn technology, which is a way to network mobile devices peer-to-peer.
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