Qualcomm charts new directions for content and applications market

With smartphones having entered the affordability ranks, the device game is being spruced up with the drive towards enhancing supporting applications and content. Set to up the stakes in the mobile content space, Qualcomm is taking new routes to drive the content ecosystem

Moheb Ramsis is senior director of business operations for North Africa, Qualcomm

As an enhancement to its traditional partnership approach with telecom players, Qualcomm is emphasising the key role content will play in driving the telecom industry by sponsoring the Cinemobile Film Festival in Egypt.

“Our association with Arabiacpd – the largest film production and distribution company in Egypt – to organise this festival, is a major step towards enhancing user created content and creating high quality videos optimised for smartphones,” said Moheb Ramsis, senior director of business operations for North Africa, Qualcomm. “It’s a clear way for us to show that content is a key value driver for the smartphone industry.”

This initiative represents a strong march towards expanding locally relevant content, complete with a specialised jury, an online platform for filmmakers to upload their movies, and viewers to watch and vote for their favourite films using their smartphones or other connected devices.

From affordability to attractiveness

For Ramsis and his team, smartphone affordability is just the starting point. “Now the focus is on enhancing the value of premium-priced devices by giving consumers better applications and content,” he explains.

Qualcomm is creating a partnership network that will work towards increasing the availability of content that is optimised, localised and built using a network of local developers to deliver more regionally relevant mobile applications. The company recently announced a collaboration with one of Egypt’s largest telecom conglomerates, Orascom Telecom Ventures (OT Ventures).

A holding company for several entities such as ARPUPlus, LinkDev, ConnectAds, and others, OT Ventures develops and provides different types of telecom value-added services ranging from applications development to content creation and aggregation, online advertising and more. Qualcomm’s association with Orascom will give both companies the opportunity to dip into the mobile content and applications pie across segments.

“Our partnership is overarching and gives us the leg room to engage with Orascom in different areas, including jointly helping developers with trainings to create ground breaking new apps based on Qualcomm’s developer tools, such as our Vuforia SDK (Software Development Kits).

Augmented Reality presents opportunities

At the high-end, Qualcomm has been leading the development of augmented reality applications by training software developers to work with Qualcomm’s Vuforia augmented reality platform and to develop localised applications that are optimised – but not restricted – to run on Snapdragon-powered phones.

“Augmented reality is the concept of superimposing digital graphics on top of a view of the real world as seen through you mobile device’s camera. It is a very attractive concept in itself and there are many ways to apply it in different areas of life. For example, imagine pointing your smartphone’s camera at a sign printed in Arabic and watching it instantly translate to English. Or imagine pointing it at an in-store advertisement and watching the images spring to life in 3D. There are also many other possibilities, such as in education, entertainment, advertising, and more. The only limit is the imagination of local developers,” Ramsis says.

Looking at new ways for partnerships

Besides working with partners to drive content development, Qualcomm is also investing its time and efforts to grow mobile content in other directions, including through its R&D in chipset development.

“We collaborate with a lot of companies that use our processors in their devices and we work with them to port applications and pre-load them on to devices sold in the region to give the devices and mobile services a local flavour,” Ramsis says.

Another way to drive collaborations is through retail initiatives and operator partnerships, where content and applications are offered for free download when a device is purchased.

“Content strategy is being approached in many ways, including using it as a marketing tool and promoting partner solutions. We are already seeing significant traction and expect to see many more locally developed applications,” Ramsis emphasises.