Qualcomm says momentum is growing for its Snapdragon platform. The San Diego company is unveiling new advances in mobile connectivity and capabilities powered by its Snapdragon platform at the Computex Taipei 2009 show, taking place this week in Taiwan.
Software developers now supporting Snapdragon chipsets include Zinio, RealNetworks, Bluestreak, Varia Mobile, Phoenix Technologies, ThunderSoft, Xandros, Haansoft, Remoba, Conveneer, Bsquare and Movial.
Applications on smartphones and smartbooks enabled by Snapdragon are scheduled to become commercially available beginning this summer, according to Qualcomm.
Among those doing demonstrations of Snapdragon-based devices at Computex are ASUS, Compal Communications, Foxconn, High Tech Computer (HTC), Inventec, Toshiba and Wistron.
Qualcomm is going after a new category of mobile devices, dubbed smartbooks, as opposed to Intel-based netbooks. Netbooks use an Intel Atom processor and run Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system, but the Windows operating systems don’t run on the Snapdragon processors. Smartbooks using Snapdragon run on Linux.
Meanwhile, Qualcomm says it is expanding the Snapdragon platform with a next-generation chipset that uses 45 nanometer (nm) process technology to provide faster processing, significant battery life improvements and other enhancements for the user experience on smartphones and smartbooks.
The new Snapdragon QSD8650A chipset – scheduled for sampling before the end of 2009 – offers significant performance improvements, including a 1.3 GHz processor for 30 percent higher performance as well as enhanced multimedia and 2D/3D graphics, the company says.
Last fall, Qualcomm noted the Snapdragon platform was gaining industry traction, with more than 30 device designs in development and more than 15 leading device manufacturers looking to the platform for mobile computing devices.