Qualcomm has announced enhancements to its IoT Connectivity platform at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2017 in Las Vegas, which aim to deliver “virtually seamless connectivity” across a variety of devices and technologies.
For the first time, the IoT network can make simultaneous use of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, CSRmesh connectivity and 802.15.4-based technologies. This opens the door to a wide range of solutions that were previously unsupported on Qualcomm’s platform.
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The IoT Connectivity Platform already supports a wide range of communication protocols, cloud services, and software frameworks, so the addition of new networking standards makes Qualcomm’s platform a potential universal translator for IoT developers.
Should make IoT network development less “of a hassle”
All of this makes the development of IoT networks less of a hassle, as most of the important technologies, protocols, and standards are supported on one platform. Qualcomm expects this will ease “fragmentation challenges” for manufacturers and developers.
“The Qualcomm Network continues to redefine connected experiences by making connectivity simple, high quality, and consistent across devices and technologies,” said Gopi Sirineni, the vice president of product management at Qualcomm. “The IoT Connectivity platform is designed to deliver on that promise by directly addressing the most fundamental connectivity challenges of IoT.”
Qualcomm is attempting to make the same move it did in mobile, by building an ecosystem for third parties that provides almost all of the legwork. It is not in the same position of power as it is in the mobile industry, but if it can continue to add networks and standards to its platform, it could see a similar turnaround in a few years.
