By Maisie Ramsay
Monday, October 26, 2009
Qualcomm has created a wholly owned subsidiary focused exclusively on the development of open source platforms for the mobile industry.
The subsidiary, dubbed Qualcomm Innovation Center (QuIC), is comprised of a group of engineers whose goal is to use Qualcomm's technology to optimize open source software. In addition to Qualcomm's other ventures, the chip maker has a near monopoly on CDMA patents.
"Open source and community-driven software development is becoming increasingly important to the wireless industry [and] QuIC is committed to meaningful participation in these development efforts," said Rob Chandhok, QuIC's president and senior vice president of software strategy for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, in a statement.
Chandhok said the new subsidiary will focus on multiple, open-source operating systems, including Linux, Webkit, Symbian, Android and Chrome.