HTC moving away from Qualcomm
After a lot of bad press, it seems HTC has had enough of Qualcomm’s sluggish chips. According to Digitimes, in 2009 HTC will be releasing up to 10 new handhelds, and unlike last year, these will not be exclusively using Qualcomm chipsets, but will instead be hedging their bets by also using Ericsson’s Mobile Platform (EMP).
EMP delivers one of the smallest tri-band 3.5G chipsets, so we can look forward to another generation of super-small and thin smartphones.
Of course we know Qualcomm is scrambling to fix their chips (or at least their drivers), so it all may turn out to be good in the end. Its certain however that Qualcomm is very much reaping what they sowed in 2007 and 2008.
Source: Digitimes.com
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Looking forward to new HTC smartphone designs!
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I think it’s rather unlikely that they will abandon Qualcomm. Maybe we’ll see devices that will use EMP as radio for some worldwide devices but I think that Qualcomm will be their main platform. There is the possibility that they will use EMP with tegra for one of devices. But as I said I’m not convinced that HTC will change qualcomm for someone else. Although I could be wrong. Time will tell.
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Wishmaster is right. Qualcomm will be their main platform. EMP will be used on devices using Tegra (it doesn’t include any radio/GPS/etc chip).
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Ike,
Do you have any sources, or is it speculation?
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I for one encourage HTC to look else where. Competition ALWAYS breeds a better product. Qualcomm has dropped the ball now twice in my opinion with the 7201A chipsets series and the previous Kaiser/Polaris/Sedna phones as well. It’s pretty apparent how poor the performance these devices are when you can see what a Marvell 800mhz chip can do and still produce better battery life.
I am not a fan of Qualcomm at all and for one look forward to HTC using other chip manufactures other then Qualcomm. The company is known for developing CDMA technology not making chipsets for mobile phones. Would
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Completely agree AllTheWay. Qualcomm, to me, is synonymous with sluggish performance. This is a big dent to HTC’s reputation, and if they persist with merely Qualcomm chipsets, then I, for one am leaving HTC permanently.
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Adam and why do you think that it is only qualcomms fault for sluggish performance? Maybe it was HTC who decided not to buy licence for every option of SoC. Maybe HTC didn’t do it properly. We can’t be sure who is to blame.
Let’s wait and see what will snapdragon bring. It cost qualcomm too much to screw it up now. If it turns out to be a failure then I will say that you we’re right but for now I give them one more chance.
P.S. If they are going to change chipset supplier why they didn’t do it after kaiser/polaris/sedna failure? If they didn’t do it back then then they won’t do it now.
But that is only my opinion.
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dr g Reply:
January 8th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Because Qualcomm should be interested enough in its products to not let it be represented poorly in the marketplace.
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[...] [Via wmpoweruser.com] [...]
I think HTC wanted to give Qualcomm another shot with the 7201A chipset series. After seeing that it wasn’t up to par with what is wanted and expected they will jump ship. Companies change chipset / NAND / NOR providers all time. Some mobile providers even change chipsets and memory after the device has already been released.
I know HTC is not to blame because look at the performance the HTC Wizard and HTC Hermes. Both phenomenal devices as far as performance for there time and both had different chipsets. One was the 250mhz Texas Instruments OMAP processor that runs great in the HTC Wizard. The HTC Hermes ran the 400mhz Samsung that also was phenomenal. I know HTC can make quality phones they just need to find another company that doesn’t make radio technology but makes chips for a living.
Bring on Marvell if you ask me. A company that can produce a 800mhz chip with very minimal battery usage is the right company for the job.
I know Marvell and Qualcomm with both be at the CES show in Las Vegas. I’m sure Marvell will have there phones on display while Qualcomm does not. Just shows you the differences in the company.
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[...] [Via wmpoweruser.com] [...]
But you know that marvell still uses intels xscale technology where freescale, omap, qualcomm, STMicroelectronics move to cortex-A8 and in future to A9. Cortex A8 should offer more processing power than 800mhz armv5 even at lower mhz. When we compare NEON to xscale’s greatest advantage wmmx instructions the latter doesn’t stand a chance. So if marvell doesn’t show some cortex A8 processor they might fail in competition with ARMv7.
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NuShrike Reply:
January 7th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
Here you go again Wishymaster with speculation about how much better Qualcomm could be. The future is now and Qualcomm has under delivered. How do you know that HTC hasn’t bought all SoC options by now with continued complaints about their new devices’ sluggishness? HTC is too shamed now to even advertise that their devices can be multimedia power-houses.
There is no compelling need currently for a phone device to go the full Cortex nor ARM6 route. I’ve developed for the instruction set, and ARM5 is still plenty enough. All that is needed is good hardware-software optimization, and EMP has proven that time and time again on SE phones with their stellar Java/graphics performance results. EMP coupled with STMicroelectronics is a serious contender against Samsung’s push.
Qualcomm is only good currently as a catch-all SoC solution. Waiting another full-cycle for Snapdragon to mature is pure suicide.
Why do you continue to shill for HTC/Qualcomm when it’s obvious this hardware cycle is blown? How can you continue to have faith in something you “should” know very little about, and can only fanboi future specs?
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[...] [Via wmpoweruser.com] [...]
“Let’s wait and see what will snapdragon bring” – this will make us (actual htc&qualcomm users) happy ?
“Let’s wait”, “it will be better”.. this is unclear.. future is unclear
we live the present. qualcomm is worse in present, was in past and most probable will be in future (because Marvell will just not close their eyes)
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finally they learn something,
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[...] HTC moving away from Qualcomm [...]
And here we are in July and HTC are still using QC 72– crud….even releasing new model’s like the TP2 and diamond2
Are samsung and Marvell too expensive compared to qualcomm or something ?
I don’t remeber even thinking about speed before I owned a 7201a powered device
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http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=7047
Tegra with EMP, oh really Wishmaster …
This is OMAP3 on probably EMP with PowerVR.
Meantime, even the Acer m900 is better than all the current HTCs.
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