How Qualcomm learnt to love the Chinese, parked its tank in Intel’s backyard and its tollbooth at the centre of India’s telecom highway
There is something about technology companies that makes them want to dominate the world. Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, IBM, Google and even Apple all want the world to veer around to their point of view and therefore their products. Maybe it is something to with the transient nature of technology advantage. Those who manage to be dominant, even for a short-while, are seen as visionaries. And then there are those who are almost in that camp but not quite. For much of its life Qualcomm has been in the latter camp — the almost-Microsoft.
There Will Be Changes
But as wireless data traffic skyrocketed around the world over the last few years, regulators in country after country kept coming up short of enough paired spectrum to feed their telecom operators with. Which was good for WiMAX, but bad for FD-LTE.
(This story appears in the 16 July, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)