In many ways, Qualcomm is one of the key players in shaping the mobile business. Not only do they provide the current fastest mobile chip in the industry (the ARM-based 1 GHz SnapDragon) but they have long been the providers for CDMA chips that are shaping the mobile data consumption scene. And this is as true for mobile phones as it is true for laptops. That’s because current laptops come with the capability to connect to wireless networks on their own steam. This is thanks to the modems built into their systems. And more often than not, this modem is a Qualcomm Gobi modem.
Gobi isn’t just any other modem, it is the modem that lets you connect to multiple services without having to switch out the hardware. One chip supports them all. As you can imagine, manufacturers are in love with this chip and they use it in a majority of the laptops.
AT CTIA this year in Las Vegas this year, Qualcomm announced their latest upgrade to the Gobi modems. They are adding LTE or Long Term Evolution 4G to the whole mix. Thus taking these 3G modems above and beyond their current data capacities.
With Gobi now, you can in all practicality switch between services as disparate as Verizon’s EV-DO and AT&T HSPA at the software level. Your hardware stays the same and inside your laptop throughout with out having to be swapped out. This advantage gives manufacturers a chance to lower manufacturing costs and it also helps the consumers have more choice about which service they want to purchase.
There are several Gobi options that vary in the speeds that they provide and manufacturers can choose them according to their needs. Michael Concannon, Senior Vice-President of connectivity and wireless modules at Qualcomm explains that a manufacturer would probably want to go with a 3.2 Mb/s chip on their lower-end, a 14.4 one on their mid-range offerings and on the high-end they would probably want to ensure LTE support.
Gobi has been ubiquitous all this time and now with this new addition, they have ensured that their modems are also future safe. Even though LTE has not really been started in the US or other parts of the world in a major way, there area already a lot of testing and trial runs going one everywhere where there’s scope for it. Hence, it can be expected that the time will come soon when we will be asking for LTE support on our devices and then a lot of us will be thankful that Gobi had this module for us before LTE became a mainstream option.
From a business point of view, this move is going to maintain Qualcomm’s position as an industry leader in the wireless connectivity sector. It is always good to see a company not resting on its laurels and constantly innovating to be the first out of the lab with next-generation devices. We had a similar response to the 1GHz SnapDragon processor when it was first launched. It has become one of the more well-known achievements of Qualcomm since the end-user feels the difference right away and a lot of the new mobile models are leveraging its speeds in their spec sheets.
This new addition to their modems will go unnoticed for now because the average end user of these laptops are not really certain about what LTE is or when it will arrive. Further confusion is created when they realize the current 4G technology (in the US only) is actually called WiMAX and the real 4G comes after what is called LTE 4G. LTE is just the step before the world moves on to real 4G speeds, which are supposed to face-meltingly fast. Currently Verizon is testing out 4G and there was a rumor last year that the next iPhone will be on Verizon’s 4G network and will have the highest data speed hands down as a result. Here’s a chart from Panasonic from some time back to put things into perspective
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