A blog post by Qualcomm’s senior vice president of program management for CDMA Technologies, Jeff Lorbeck has introduced the Qualcomm Reference Design (QRD) program which aims to reduce smartphones’ time to market at much reduced costs.
Lorbeck had noted, “Smartphone demand is high, but the industry has traditionally lacked the capacity to reduce the time to market in a manner that can meet that desire for low-cost, highly functional devices. The result is that OEMs have been unable to maximise output and profit in emerging regions.”
According to the senior VP, the program allows OEMs to launch products faster and at lower engineering costs because they would be based off Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 mobile processors.
“The QRD ecosystem includes comprehensive handset development platforms; it also provides access to third-party providers of tested and verified hardware and software components for rapid delivery of commercial high-volume smartphone devices with unique differentiated user experiences.”
To date, the QRD program has launched 57 products and has collaborated with more than 40 OEMs with approximately 100 devices in the pipeline. These are aimed at bridging the gap between feature phones and smartphones in emerging markets
Lorbeck also had more to share, “Today, we’re pleased to announce a relationship with one of the leaders in the Chinese mobile market – Lenovo. We’ve worked together to create two brand new Snapdragon S4 dual-core QRD smartphones, the QRD8225-based Lenovo S686 and QRD8625-based Lenovo A700e. The Lenovo S686 and A700e are created specifically for emerging regions and will be commercially available in China through China Telecom (A700e) and the open market (S686).”
The success story here is that the QRD program enabled Lenovo to reduce design costs and get to market just two months after the commercial sample of the QRD8x25 reference design.
Lorbeck added that devices such as the Lenovo S686 and Lenovo A700e will serve as a catalyst for regions “…where consumers’ overwhelming enthusiasm for mobile devices is facilitating the transition from 2G to 3G.
“This trend benefits everyone – OEMs looking to sell more devices, consumers looking for more premium mobile content and better user experiences, governments looking to benefit from the burgeoning app economy … and the chipset manufactures humbly serving as an enabler to it all.”
A Qualcomm spokesperson has said they are unable to give a timeline but can say, “…there are QRD smartphones coming to Malaysia in the near future.”
