American convergence alliance breaks as Qualcomm buys out Microsoft

6 Nov 2001 at 20:04 GMT Timo Poropudas

Three years ago Microsoft and Qualcomm set up a new company, Wireless Knowledge, to join together desktop and wireless world. This American convergence alliance fell apart yesterday when Wireless Knowledge bought Microsoft’s half and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm.

In a joint press release companies all but spell out the problems they have had in setting a direction for future development Eric Schultz, chairman and CEO of Wireless Knowledge is quoted by the press release: “The new structure will enable Wireless Knowledge to accelerate the adoption of next generation mobility solutions within the enterprise running on CDMA2000 and WCDMA -- emerging 3G high-speed wireless data networks,” i.e. Qualcomm flavor of the 3G networks platforms.

"Microsoft has recently introduced our own product line to accelerate mobile application development and enable Office and Exchange customers to become mobile office workers anytime and anyplace," said Bob Muglia, group vice president at Microsoft. "For this reason both companies have decided it is best to pursue our respective goals using independent technologies," Muglia said.