Budget smartphones to flood the market

MWC 2009: Qualcomm introduces new cheaper chipset

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16 February 2009 7:50 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Following the success of the INQ1 in the UK, Qualcomm has said that they will be launching a new chipset that will allow manufacturers to create a new sub £100 ($150) smartphone category.

Announcing the Mobile Station Modem (MSM) MSM 7227 chipset at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company says the new offering will deliver considerably more features within a budget.

"This is for the mature market rather than an emerging one", said a spokesman for the company.

Manufacturers looking to utilise the chipset in their latest mid-range handsets will get a 600MHz applications processor, hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, integrated Bluetooth 2.1 and GPS.

"We see a significant opportunity to bring the best features of today's Smartphones to the mass-market segment", said Alex Katouzian, vice president of product management at Qualcomm's CDMA technologies department.

Phones will also be able to offer an 8-megapixel camera and 30fps WVGA video encode and decode display support alongside HSDPA and support for Android, Symbian S60, Windows Mobile and BREW mobile platform.

The new MSM 7227 chip is expected to launch later this year.