By willm on January 21, 2009 3:17 PM

Qualcomm CEO on Mobile Social Networking, Data Services Platforms and LBS (Location Based Services)

Red Herring Global – Top 100 Tech Startups in the World – San Diego 2009

Qualcomm is driven by a vision of ubiquitous Internet connectivity, and sees itself as a key enabler for the wireless ecosystem that will bring global scale web access into reality. Qualcomm innovations will drive the Internet’s fundamental usage model of accessing information, people, services and content – adding wireless and location specific variables to the equation. Qualcomm prefers to maintain its role of “standing behind” the business models of telecom companies and handset makers. Qualcomm will leave the challenges and opportunities of creating LBS (Location Based Services) driven mobile social media experiences to social networking companies and start ups.

These are our key takeaways from Paul Jacobs, Chief Executive Officer of Qualcomm, in his keynote conversation with Alex Vieux, CEO and Publisher of Red Herring. Alex and Paul discussed his leadership experience at Qualcomm and the company’s vision for pervasive, global Internet access. The SocialTimes conversed with Paul afterward to probe more deeply as to how Qualcomm will help shape the global social media landscape .

Qualcomm Enabling Global Data Services and LBS (Location Based Services)

It is hard to overstate Qualcomm’s role in bringing Internet connectivity and the potential social media participation to the world’s population. Qualcomm’s chips currently power 700 million wireless devices, and the company ships 86 million chipsets a quarter. Paul explained that Qualcomm’s vision has always centered on creating ubiquitous data services for the world’s consumers. Qualcomm is finally making that vision a reality by moving the focus beyond voice to data services on cell phones, particularly with its recent successes in the area of CDMA and 3G in China. Qualcomm clearly plays an important role in helping people without PCs to become new users of the Internet via mobile phones. This definitely got our attention, as the majority of growth at leading social networks is international. We have been covering Facebook’s global growth phenomenon and helping our readership track trends with our demographic statistics tool.

Leading Startups in Mobile Social Networking and LBS (Location Based Services)

The Red Herring Global conference featured presentations from mobile social networking companies with millions of active members currently consuming LBS (Location Based Services) driven social media services. Red Herring Global 100 award winners included China’s leading mobile social networking company, Peptalk’s Bedo.cn, with 2.2 million users and Europe’s established mobile social network , mobiluck, with its 3 million plus users.

Qualcomm’s Position in the Data Services Ecosystem

Qualcomm Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM) is a leader in developing and delivering innovative digital wireless communications products and services based on CDMA and other advanced technologies. Qualcomm designs semiconductor chips that power a wide range of wireless devices, primarily cell phones. Alex Vieux asked Paul about the “Intel Inside” approach to branding Intel’s chips as components of devices. Alex pointed out that few of the 700 million people who use his company’s products via mobile handsets, etc. could even name Qualcomm or know what it his company does. Paul was quick to confirm his faith in Qualcomm’s strategy of not getting “out in front of” the brands of its clients, as with a sticker on their products. Similarly, Paul told SocialTimes that Qualcomm’s intent is to leave the creation of social network services, branded or otherwise, up to telco operators and social application creators. Paul said Qualcomm did not develop a consumer brand even for its MediaFLO mobile television technology and services, so as to not create brand conflicts with telecom customers. Qualcomm’s approach contrasts strongly with Facebook’s goal to become the branded “social operating system” for the consumer Internet. We believe Qualcomm’s focus on enabling technology will create great opportunity for social media companies over the long term.

Qualcomm – No Social Media Plans to Speak Of

We expected Paul to say that Qualcomm has specific in-house plans related to social media applications. We were easily swept up in his vision for global data services and the applications this enabled, and expected that somehow social media features should be built into wireless chipsets. Similar to our learning experiences with TV widgets and social media at CES, we found that social application APIs exist at the software level above the base silicon offered by chip vendors like Qualcomm. We did try to make the connection between Qualcomm and social media – hoping to cover a Qualcomm branded initiative similar to the Yahoo! Intel Widget Channel partnership. We probed the subject by discussing with Paul how people’s phones contain their true social network – specifically the list of the people they call and who calls them. Layer into their address book aggregated profile data and network specific feeds, perhaps? Paul acknowledged the potential for this, but reminded us that his strategy is to enable innovation on the part of his customers and their partners – a response similar to his humble rebuff of Alex’s strategic questions around the success of the “Intel Inside” branding campaigns.

Boomer Technology and Wireless Social Media

Paul and Qualcomm are working to develop wireless Internet connectivity as an enabling technology for healthcare. Paul is very excited about the potential for real time data feeds from wireless devices to help with healthcare delivery. Paul was clearly familiar with leading technology companies’ activities in the space, including Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault. Paul was quick to point out that there are massive privacy concerns around sharing data related to health. We discussed how this will create a special form of “social network” that will define a key cluster on the social graph in the coming wave of boomer technology – one limited to connections between a patient, their doctors, family members and providers of health services. Again, social media fell outside of Qualcomm’s focus on enabling real time data communication of health information. We discussed social applications such as helping family members cooperate in care-giving and networks of patients discussing similar health challenges, however, these all could happen on Facebook, asynchronously via the fixed Internet. Paul remarked that wireless medicine could indeed learn from the lessons learned by Facebook and others in the area of privacy settings.

Do you think Qualcomm should leave social applications “to the experts”, given the company’s important role in the future evolution of social media?