Qualcomm may have been pushing their own 4G cellular broadband technology, UMB, but with takers in short supply they were also doing a healthy turn of business with WiMAX silicon.  Now they’ve surprised everyone (except those who realise that the potential to make money will overrule any tech loyalty) by announcing new chipset roadmaps that include Long Term Evolution (LTE), another competing 4G standard and one which has been validated by the GSM Association.  This means Qualcomm will have chipsets that support UMTS, HSPA and EV-DO and a variety of combinations of the three.

“Qualcomm is in a very unique position with LTE, being one of the very few companies that will be able to offer multi-mode solutions that deliver an upgrade path for operators looking to complement their existing 3G networks with LTE” Steve Mollenkopf, senior vice president of product management, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies 

The MDM9xxx-series LTE device chipsets will include:

• MDM9200 chipset designed to support UMTS, HSPA+ and LTE
• MDM9800 chipset designed to support EV-DO Rev. B, UMB and LTE
• MDM9600 chipset designed to support UMTS, HSPA+, EV-DO Rev. B, UMB and LTE

All will offer full backward compatibility, support FDD and TDD duplex modes, different carrier bandwidths and will be capable of supporting peak data rates of up to 50 Mbps on the downlink and 25 Mbps on the uplink.

[via Engadget]