Qualcomm in negotiations with Reliance for 3G phones

New Delhi, June 28 (UNI) Qualcomm, world's top CDMA phone manufacturer, today said it would meet up with Reliance Infocomm as part of its plans to sell 3G phones in the Indian market.

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said he would be holding talks with Mr Anil Ambani on Friday.

Mr Jacobs said his company planned to make India an important hub for its newly developed technology called binary runtime environment for wireless (BREW). This technology enables application developers, publishers, content providers, device manufacturers, operators and customers to use Qualcomm's technology to build applications for mobile devices.

Qualcomm, world's largest provider of 3-G (third generation) chipset and software technology, supplies CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) to various handset-manufacturing companies such as LG, Samsung and Nokia.

The company has research and development centres in Bangalore and Hyderabad where software and hardware designs are developed.

The San-Diego, California based telecom major, also said that it may use some of the royalties earned from mobile phone sales in India to fund research projects in India.

Qualcomm have been under pressure from Indian mobile phone companies to cut those royalty fees, which local companies say are higher than those charged in China.

Mr Jacobs said the main issue was the cost of producing handsets, which could be lowered with further research and development. He said Qualcomm was looking to fund research work by public institutions in India with some of the royalties earned here.

"We are having some discussions about what opportunities are there," Mr Jacobs said.

In South Korea, the company uses nearly a fifth of its royalty money to fund government-run research projects.

Reliance Telecom had sought GSM licenses from the government for Delhi and Bombay.

Qualcomm's royalties in India on handsets based on its CDMA technology were about 5 per cent.

Mr Jacobs said a 40 dollar handset got the company a payment of two dollars for Qualcomm.

''If we cut that royalty rate even in half, it's only a dollar as compared to what we did by creating competition and got handset prices down by 25 per cent.'' ''Reliance is in the process of evaluating what they want to do.

I believe very strongly that CDMA is third generation technology,'' Mr Jacobs said.

''It seems strange to move from a third generation technology to a second generation technology. But we are having those discussions.

Their focus is on getting the lowest cost handsets possible, and we are working with them to try and enable that.

''We are trying to convince them that both we can lower the price of the handsets and keep that functionality that allows them to generate increased revenues.'' Earlier, speaking at the seminar organised by CII, Mr Jacobs said 3G mobile would soon service people in areas of healthcare, education, public safety, e-governance, rural development and achieving inclusive growth.

He said Qualcomm will award five grants totaling 500,000 dollars for the development of the most innovative proposal for a BREW community application in the areas of healthcare, education, public safety, governance and environment. He also invited Indian professionals given their strengths in the field of IT to contribute to this innovative work." UNI/RT PV VV2022