Qualcomm terminates Snapdragon Satellite partnership with Iridium
Qualcomm's Snapdragon Satellite is dead before it even arrives on any Android device.
Announced earlier this year, it was a partnership between Qualcomm and Iridium to bring satellite connectivity to Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 devices.
Iridiumshared in its press release that Qualcomm recently notified the company to terminate their partnership with effect from 3 December.
While both companies "successfully developed and demonstrated the technology", Iridium says the lack of interest from smartphone makers to include the technology in their devices led to the end of the partnership.
Iridium says the termination of the partnership allows the company to directly re-engage with other smartphone makers, chipmakers, and smartphone platform developers that it had been working with previously.
Even though Snapdragon Satellite is dead, that doesn't mean we won't see satellite communication on Android devices.
Qualcomm says in a statement to CNBC that it will continue to work with Iridium on "standards-based solutions" since smartphone makers have "indicated a preference towards standards-based solutions" for satellite-to-phone connectivity.
Earlier this year in February, Samsung announced its two-way satellite connectivity solution for smartphones. The South Korean company developed and simulated the 5G non-terrestrial (NTN) modem technologystandard-based satellite technology with the Exynos Modem 5300 reference platform.
And perhaps more importantly,at least one of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S24 models is tipped to support satellite communications.
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