Little less than a decade ago, when the hype around the "mobile Internet" was at its peak, the vision of running your entire life -- including banking -- from your cell phone was a common theme. While some financial institutions jumped quickly on the mobile-banking bandwagon, many, including Wells Fargo
Qualcomm
Firethorn has had considerable success lately in partnering with wireless carriers and financial institutions to enable secure mobile banking. Just as eBay's
Indeed, many companies are now getting back into the mobile banking game. Wachovia and AT&T
While many still view Qualcomm as a hardware and intellectual-property company, the San Diego-based giant started to extend more and more into software and applications with the launch of its BREW mobile software in 2001. The BREW platform lets users quickly and easily download games and other applications to mobile phones. So other core applications that theoretically anyone would want to use, such as mobile banking, fit well with Qualcomm's goals.
Since Qualcomm also holds the top spot in supplying wireless semiconductors, the acquisition furthers the possibility of embedding banking functions in silicon. This would provide a natural step to the next level of mobile banking: contactless payment by waving your phone in front of a retail scanner. For that level of capability, you need hardware and software working together -- something Qualcomm can do much better now with Firethorn inside.
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