May 8 to June 7, and has more than doubled its workforce, from 25 to 55, this year.
—I wonder if anyone at Qualcomm’s facilities management read my colleague Wade Roush’s column about Steve Jobs proposal for a new Apple headquarters in Cupertino, CA. In a presentation at Cupertino City Hall, Jobs unveiled plans for a vast, circular, spaceship-like structure with room for as many as 13,000 people, or nearly everyone Apple employs in the city. I thought of all those alphabetized Qualcomm buildings throughout San Diego when Wade wrote, “Jobs is absolutely right that the headquarters campus of the world’s most successful consumer electronics company should be more than a hodgepodge of buildings surrounded by parking lots.”
—The Palo Alto, CA-based Marconi Group gave its prestigious Marconi Prize this year to Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs and the late Jack Kiel Wolf, a UC San Diego computer theorist whose research helped lay the foundations for digital information and communications.
—WaterSmart Software, based in San Francisco and San Diego, recently raised $900,000 to expand development of its technology platform, which uses customer data drawn from its utility partners to help water utilities and their customers reduce consumption and save money. WaterSmart creates websites for its utility partners that enables consumers to log on and see how much water they are using, and get individualized recommendations on ways to reduce their water usage.
—Reporter Mike Freeman of The San Diego Union-Tribune pulled together a chart on executive pay among the top executives of public companies in the San Diego region. Life Technologies chairman and CEO Greg Lucier was No. 1 this year, with total compensation of more than $33 million.
—Qualcomm’s strategy for the fast-changing global wireless market became a little clearer during the recent Uplinq conference for mobile developers. The wireless chipmaker wants to cast itself as a universal hardware developer and core technology enabler for all mobile ecosystems. Qualcomm said its Snapdragon chips are now in 120 smartphone and tablets, with another 250 Snapdragon-powered devices in development.
