Qualcomm: Enabling Innovation in the Mobile Technology Ecosystem in Nigeria

As the world leader in next generation mobile technologies, Qualcomm ideas and inventions no doubt, are driving wireless growth and helping to connect people to information, entertainment and one another. Qualcomm’s breakthrough technologies enable the convergence of mobile communications and consumer electronics, making wireless devices and services more personal, affordable and accessible to people everywhere. Qualcomm with her presence in Nigeria is at the centre of helping drive the mobile ecosystem by supporting the Original Equipment manufacturers (OEMs), the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and the Application Developers.

At Mobile Web West Africa Conference in Lagos last week, we spoke with Alex Dadson, Senior Director Business Development West Africa at Qualcomm on some interesting developments.

Here is the Interview:

On Qualcomm

Qualcomm is essentially a technology enabler for the wireless industry. What we do is generate ideas around how wireless or mobility can impart people’s life. And with these ideas we develop technology which ends up in our Chipsets. The whole idea is for the chipset to be acceptable by all and so we have a portfolio approach to our chipset business. We have high-end chipset and also entry level chipsets, all of them are supporting android. The same application you can run on high-end devices can also run on low end devices and sometimes with some limitations but in general you can run the app across the entire family of chipsets that we have. The long and short of it is that at Qualcomm we enable technology for the wireless ecosystem as our technology is used by network operators, Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and application developers.

 On Innovation and new Technologies

At Qualcomm, we are constantly innovating along the features that are embodied by our Chipsets. Since this is Mobile Web West Africa event, most people  here are interested in experiencing rich web content over their mobile devices so we have very advanced graphics processing unit in our chipsets with solid computational unit, good connecting technology in form of modem, excellent radios that talk to 3G and 4G networks and these are all innovations that enable the end users have great experience with their mobile devices and enjoy online mobile content and applications they have running on the mobile devices.

One of the things we do is look at the challenges and critical needs in the market we operate and then with our technology we provide the needed solution to make life easier for people. For example, we have seen that power is really an issue in Nigeria and Emerging markets in general, we innovate in the area of power management in phones that have our chipsets, the Asynchronous multi- process technology from Qualcomm improves and optimize your phone battery by monitoring how the various chords in the chipsets of the phone are operating and making sure the applications draw minimal power thereby extending the battery life.

One of such innovations we would like to talk about is the Augmented Reality (AR) technology. This is a computer based application which actually does what the name says-augment your reality. A phone with Augmented Reality app has the ability to scan and recognize images and then overlay on the screen extra information about the reality you are observing. For example, if you want to know the outside temperature, you could simply point your phone to an outside window and then you certainly will see the actual temperature of the environment on your phone.AR is exciting and the potential of the AR app in this market is incredible. We have demonstrated the use of the AR app in one edition of the Genevive magazine which was augmented with an AR app. In that edition of the magazine, if you open a particular page and see an article, your smart phone recognizes an artiste and plays content related to the artiste. Isn’t that wonderful? This is one of such practical applications of AR which makes the readers have great interaction and unique experience with the magazine. We hope to train developers from Nigeria on how to use the Augmented Reality technology in building commercial applications in the Nigeria market.

Developers in Nigeria and Creating more Value for their Apps

It is interesting to see the zeal, passion and energy of developers in Nigeria to build apps that run on mobile devices. Some of them are really asking the question, How do I monetize my app?. I would say,in monetizing their application they have always taken to the simplest route which is taking their apps to the Mobile Network Operators(MNOs) and at the end of the day they get disappointed with the MNOs who in themselves have a higher negotiating power in such negotiations because they built the networks and wanna capture all the data themselves too. And so what developers from Nigeria should be thinking about is who else wants the app that I have, who else out there will find great value in using my app and will be willing to pay for it. Who else benefits from the existence of my app and what it does, I tell you for example, if a developer has an app that monitors how well a driver drives, who do you go to with such app, you don’t go to the MNOs, the person that cares about good driving most is the Insurance companies who s also willing to pay for such app. Also take for instance the AR app I talked to you about earlier, the magazine company is the one willing to pay for such app and it took a local development a week to get that done. So developers in Nigeria should think creatively in that direction in order to monetize their apps.

It is also important to mention that the developers themselves need technical and business oriented trainings to build world class apps. At Qualcomm we support the developers in giving them the technical training they need. We also have a program called the Wireless Reach where we give grants to innovators who want to look at wireless interventions to various societal problems. In addition to the technical training we offer Nigeria developers, it is important for them to get training on how to start and run a business. This will increase their success with their apps.

Learn more about Qualcomm from their website www.qualcomm.com