Qualcomm makes its Wi-Fi 6 move

Mobile chip giant Qualcomm wants a bigger piece of the wifi action and reckons the advent of the next generation of technology is a good opportunity to grab it.

At a recent event in San Francisco devoted entirely to Wi-Fi 6, Qualcomm launched a family of Wi-Fi 6 platforms branded the Networking Pro Series. There are four platforms, to be precise, named 1200, 800, 600, and 400, that are distinguished as follows:

Qualcomm has been banging on about Wi-Fi 6 (or 802.11ax as it was known before the Wi-Fi Alliance belatedly saw sense on nomenclature), for years, so this move is no great surprise. The big improvement isn’t so much about data rates but the number of devices a given router can support – i.e. capacity, as well as a bunch of other less obvious enhancements.

“Wi-Fi 6 is a transformational reimagining of how Wi-Fi works, a leap forward arriving alongside 5G and designed to accommodate the massive surge of connected devices,” said Nick Kucharewski, GM of wireless infrastructure and networking at Qualcomm. “The Qualcomm Networking Pro Series platforms raise the bar for the management of the ever-growing number of connected devices, the variation and complexity of those devices’ data needs, and the quality of the overall connectivity experiences they deliver.”

“The transformative nature of Wi-Fi 6 will have a deep impact across all categories of connected devices and environments,” said Edgar Figueroa, CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance. “We’re going to witness dynamic changes in Wi-Fi with the inclusion of advanced features in Wi-Fi 6 which will drive improved network capacity, better performance and increased speeds.”

As well as potentially helping it grab wifi router market share from the likes of Broadcom and Cisco, Qualcomm reckons its focus on Wi-Fi 6 can help it in other markets such as connected car and IoT. It could also do a lot to proliferate the mesh technology that Qualcomm has also been very keen to promote.