Icera may have a better chip than Qualcomm, but Qualcomm reckons
it has a better product strategy. The clash occurred today at
Silicon South-West’s Wireless 2.0
conference in Bristol.
Icera's
Rick Dingle showed data that its chip out-performs the competition,
while also being multi-generational in that its soft modem approach
allows it to span multiple process generations.
"We're the guys that Icera is trying to knock off our perch",
said Qualcomm's
Ben Timmons, "but we're coming from a different philosophy to
Icera. We're going for an integrated solution. We're driven
entirely by a belief in integration and that it is always the right
solution in the end."
Timmons instanced Qualcomm's move on the Netbook market with its
Snapdragon 2 chip-set which enables a
device which is always on. "Here's your email, here's your
Facebook, it's always there", said Timmons, "with all day battery
life."
Timmons showed a slide with customer names for the Snapdragon 2.
There were about ten of them including Acer, Asus, HTC and
Samsung.
Asked if the Nokia-Intel agreement was something Qualcomm had to
take seriously as a competitor in the Netbook market, Timmons
replied: "Intel is the biggest and best chip company in the world -
we take it very seriously." He added: "We're looking forward to the
competition. We're very good at communications; they're very good
at computing."
Asked if Qualcomm would be adopting a more collegiate attitude
in its approach to LTE IP than it adopted at the 3G generation,
Timmons replied: "We're on the chip-set side. We're just another
licensee of Qualcomm IPR."
Clearly not a man who is prepared to be drawn on the
subject.