Qualcomm to invest in more Indian companies

Qualcomm, the USA-based telecom services and products company, said it will continue to make investments in Indian companies over the coming year.

Speaking to Telecom Yatra on the sidelines of a press conference here, Sandeep Sibal, country manager and vice president of technology, Qualcomm India and South Asia, said, "We have invested in Apalya and a couple of other companies such as MapMyIndia. We do plan to continue on the path of increasing investment in India."

The company has been working on the Open Market Handsets (OMH) platform, which enables handset interoperability among OMH-compliant operators. OMH handsets can use SIM cards of any CDMA operator.

According to Sibal, "We should see more than two to three dozen handsets coming out on the open market platform in the next three to six months. The intent is to increase handset variety and to make it easier for the consumer to shift operators."

Qualcomm is currently working with handset manufacturers such as Samsung and Micromax in India, and intends to tie up with some more. Sibal said, "We work very closely with handset manufacturers and handset design companies for the launch of 3G devices. We will be tying up with other handset manufacturers in India but we are not in a position to name them. There would be many more partnerships of Qualcomm with handset companies and operators. Our focus is on 3G, affordability and smart phones."

The company is also bidding for broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum to facilitate the deployment of TD-LTE (a fourth generation wireless technology) in India. If Qualcomm emerges a winner in the auction, it intends to rope in Indian partners to help in the roll out of TD-LTE infrastructure and the associated ecosystem (devices, applications etc). After the roll out is complete, Qualcomm plans to exit the venture.