Qualcomm Steps into the Sun with Focus on Mobile OS Development

a Windows RT Metro Style App Developer Contest. The contest deadline is Oct. 1, and winners will be named in four categories: best gaming app, best productivity app, best peer-to-peer app using Qualcomm’s AllJoyn technology, and most-compelling connectivity use case. One of the four finalists also will receive a grand prize for best overall Windows RT app.

—Qualcomm said more than 1,000 mobile apps developed over the past year are using Vuforia, the company’s augmented reality technology. Jay Wright, who heads Vuforia business development for Qualcomm, demonstrated how augmented reality technology can be used by retailers to demonstrate how products in different styles and colors would look. Qualcomm’s Jacobs also made room in his keynote talk for a presentation by Ambarish Mitra, a co-founder and CEO of London-based blippar, which has developed a free augmented reality app for advertisers. In his demo, Mitra scanned a blippar code on a store display, which launched an augmented reality image of NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick. Mitra then snapped a photo of Qualcomm CEO Jacobs posing, with his arm around Harvick.

—Jacobs also stepped aside for a brief demonstration by Raj Talluri, vice president of product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT). Using a tablet computer with a four-core Snapdragon chipset, Talluri demonstrated a high-resolution image with shimmering water, shifting sands with drifting cirrus cloud shadows, “god rays,” and other graphics effects that he said are typically found in high-end quality gaming consoles. Jacobs said Qualcomm has shipped more mobile graphics processors in its multi-function Snapdragon processor than anyone else.

—Qualcomm said a preview software developers’ kit (SDK) for its Snapdragon platform on the Android operating system is now available. The full SDK will be available to device manufacturers and app developers in coming months. Qualcomm said its Snapdragon SDK for Android enables mobile developers to access next-generation technology and features of its Snapdragon processors via application programming interfaces (APIs) that would not otherwise be available. The SDK will initially support the Snapdragon S4 8960 processor, and is expected to eventually gradually support Snapdragon processors across multiple tiers.

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.