more of a virtual project than an actual media lab. “We wanted to focus in with a partner who had really good connections into the creative community and who could translate our sort of engineer orientation, engineering speak to that community and get them excited… There are a lot of interesting opportunities to combine sports and 3D gaming and augmented reality,” Jacobs said.
He also admitted that Qualcomm’s experience with Media Flo, the company’s late, lamented foray into mobile TV, was a failure at least partly because “we weren’t able somehow to engage the creative community the way we wanted to” and FloTV didn’t offer consumers something that was creative and new. It was just cable TV for your phone.
“I have come to realize in my life and in my career that we’re not necessarily the guys who actually figure out exactly how it’s going to get translated to the consumer,” Jacobs said. “We spend a lot of time thinking about what might be cool, but the actual final way that it’s delivered is not really our core competency. We’ll build the enabling technology and work with partners that actually do the final delivery.”
For all its connections, though, Qualcomm still maintains a low profile—especially among consumers.
While the company works with software developers and other partners to develop mobile games for the Snapdragon chipset and Adreno platform, Jacobs told reporters, “We’re not going to go out and build the end application generally. We don’t build the devices. We did that a long time ago and we really proved to ourselves that that is not our core competency. Really what we want to do is
