Qualcomm Inc (NASDAQ: QCOM) Acquires Tech Firm Wilocity

Qualcomm announced Wednesday that it had bought Wilocity – a Wi-Fi technology company. This acquisition will allow Qualcomm to deliver super fast wireless speeds to support the next generation of computing, mobile, and networking devices.

The purchase price is unknown, though a report about the deal back in May makes speculators think that the amount could be as high as $300 million.

Qualcomm did release a statement Wednesday afternoon that announced the acquisition.

Wilocity had raised $105 million in venture capital. It is a top company in developing 60 GHz wireless chips, also known as WiGig. This new technology raises the bar for Wi-Fi technology. Most Wi-Fi systems today only operate in 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz airwave frequency bands. As more devices connect to Wi-Fi, these bands are becoming overloaded and overcrowded.

This year, 2.3 billion gadgets are expected to be produced with Wi-Fi connectivity chips. Last year, the number was 2 billion. Clearly, the Wi-Fi chip is not going anywhere, and steadily increasing year after year.

Wilocity stated that it produced 1 million chips last year, which enable super fast Wi-Fi. Despite still being a start-up, the company’s new technology, called 802.11ad (or WiGig), is touted to lead the next generation of Wi-Fi technology.

Today, 80-2.11ac is the fastest technology available for use. However, most mobile devices and home routers use an archaic standard that is much slow than the 80-2.11ac, called 802.11n.

Qualcomm plans to mesh WiGig technology with the in the 2.4 GHz and 5GHz bands. The company will offer a “tri-band” solution to provide incredibly fast Wi-Fi. This technology would allow applications including steaming 4k videos, networking, peer content streaming, and backing up complete media libraries in a few brief seconds. The next generation of smartphones could be capable of exciting new streaming, storage, and synching technology.

It is no surprise that traffic through mobile data will increase significantly in the future, and Qualcomm is taking the challenge to meet this need head-on.

“WiGig will play an important role in Qualcomm’s strategy to address consumers’ increasingly sophisticated smartphone, tablet and computing requirements to support applications—such as immediate streaming of 4K video and high throughput peer-to-peer communication to enable the next generation of social interactions between users sharing content,” said Amir Faintuch, president of Qualcomm Atheros, in a statement.

Since 2008, Qualcomm has shown interest in Wilocity, and had invested in the company in 2011 through its Atheros division by developing and distributing Wigig solutions in the tech market. In 2011 the company bought Atheros for a price of $3.1 billion, in an effort to make a bigger footprint in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other connectivity areas.

Edgar Figueroa, president and chief executive officer of Wi-Fi Aliiance said, “The Wi-Fi Alliance is pleased to see Qualcomm drive WiGig technology more broadly into the industry. This development indicates the industry and market’s progress toward wide adoption of 60 GHz technology. WiGig will extend the Wi-Fi Alliance vision for seamless connectivity and enable new use cases.”

Together with Wilocity, Qualcomm have the capability to provide the performance, compatibility, coverage, and capacity to support future home and business networks.