Qualcomm enters nfc market with small and economical chip

Qualcomm has announced an economical and small nfc chip. According to Qualcomm, the QCA1990 is the most economical and smallest NFC chip available, and can easily be combined with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4-soc.

Near field communication chips can be used to allow two devices to communicate wirelessly, but not every phone has such a chip. Qualcomm hopes with its new ones chip to make it cheaper and easier to integrate such a chip in a telephone. For example, the chip would be half the size of conventional NFC chips. In phones, where there is always a lack of space, a smaller chip is a plus. The antennas could also be eight times smaller, which again saves space.

In addition to being smaller, the QCA1990 would also be more economical, thanks to algorithms that check whether the chip can be switched off or whether it should activate. The chip can also be easily combined with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4-soc and Qualcomm’s WiFi/Bluetooth modem and meets all possible NFC requirements. The chip would be available to manufacturers in the first quarter of 2013. The Nexus 4, with Snapdragon S4-soc, has an NFC chip from Broadcom on board, while practically all other Android devices have an NFC chip from NXP.