Qualcomm unveils chipset for 4G feature phones

Qualcomm said that it has partnered with many vendors like Reliance Jio, Micromax, Borqs, Megaphone

Telecom equipment company Qualcomm on Monday unveiled Qualcomm 205, a chipset to be used for making 4G feature phones that are expected to be priced below $50 or Rs 3,500 a unit.

"India and South Asia regions present growth opportunities in the telecom space with rising 4G adoption and continued adoption of feature phones.

"The launch of Qualcomm 205 is a chipset for 4G feature phones which provides opportunity for OEMs, operators and content providers to extend experience of 4G on feature phones," Qualcomm Technologies Senior Vice President Jim Cathey said here.

The US-based firm said that it has partnered with many vendors including Reliance Jio, Micromax, Borqs, Megaphone, Flextronics who plan to sell their 4G feature phones in India.

"Careers (telecom operators) will look at migrating their 2G customer to 4G because maintaining 2G is becoming more expensive. There will be devices (4G feature phones) in market in second quarter in sub-USD 50 range," Qualcomm Technologies Vice President for Product Management Kedar Kondap said.

The chipset will enable phones to come with 4G modem that will support download speed of up to 150 megabit per second, access to 2G, 3G and 4G network.

Besides, it will support 3 megapixel front and rear camera, dual SIMs, High Definition video streaming, VGA display and Linux based operating system.

"We are using India as launch platform but there are other regions who are interested. The chipsets have been already shipped to various vendors in many countries," Kondap said.

Though memory size of 4G feature phones would be small, there would be native application on feature phone to support digital payments and other basic utilities, he said.