According to Qualcomm, the Nokia Windows Phone might pay off nicely for the chip maker. Speaking at a technology conference, Qualcomm CFO Bill Keitel noted that Qualcomm is the only chip player qualified for Windows Phone 7 right now and while the company “took some lumps” for dedicating research and development to WP7, they see the Nokia deal could be promising.
“We stepped out some time ago with a major investment in high level operating system and porting to Microsoft was one of those. So we’re the first to port the Win Mobile 7 and I think we’re the only chip set provider yet today. That was a good year effort of hard work for us to get to that point. So you know, we’re hoping Nokia and Microsoft will go fast here and we’re ready to support them.”
Qualcomm had been investing 22-23% of revenues towards R&D will all mobile operating systems. This has since been scaled down to 17% of revenues, part of which included no longer dedicating a team to Symbian research. Keitel sees the investment in Windows Phone paying off big time as Nokia increases their Windows Phone volume.
Source: ZDNet
