Thursday, February 12, 2009

Qualcomm invests in INSIDE Contactless

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France - LONDON, United Kingdom, FEBRUARY 11th, 2009- INSIDE Contactless, a leading provider of advanced open-standard contactless chip technologies today announced that it is working with Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) to accelerate the growth of the Near Field Communication (NFC) handset market by jumpstarting the product development cycle, speeding time to market and significantly reducing development costs.

As part of the collaboration, the two companies will develop two 3G handset reference designs—one each for UMTS and CDMA2000 networks—that combine Qualcomm’s Mobile Station Modem™ (MSM™) chipsets with INSIDE’s MicroRead® multi-standard NFC chip.

Additionally, Qualcomm Ventures has joined INSIDE’s other venture capital and strategic investors making an equity investment of €4 million (US$5.2 million), extending INSIDE’s series C Preferred funding round and bringing the total for this round to €31.7 million (US$41.2 million).