Qualcomm's Snapdragon helps bring Netflix streaming app to Android

Chip-maker Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) said future Android devices powered by its latest Snapdragon mobile processors will have access to instant streaming of movies and TV shows from Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX).

The company, which will demonstrate the Netflix application at the Mobile World Congress trade show, also announced next generations of Snapdragon that will revolutionize the next wave of mobile entertainment and computing.

The Snapdragon platform fulfills Netflix security requirements necessary to bring Netflix application to Snapdragon-enabled Android devices, it said.

Qualcomm is in a unique position to help bring the most optimized and advanced Android apps to market through working closely with the strong ecosystem of Snapdragon developers like Netflix, said Liat Ben-Zur, senior director of software strategy and ecosystems for Qualcomm.

Qualcomm said its Snapdragon processors are designed to deliver dynamic performance and media protection features in a turnkey package, allowing the devices they power to more easily pass through the approval process required for Netflix certification.

In addition, Netflix video decoding is handled by highly efficient dedicated hardware, extending battery life and improving picture quality, the company said.

The company also unveiled its next mobile processor architecture - code-named Krait - for the Snapdragon family, offering speeds of up to 2.5GHz per core and delivering 150 percent higher overall performance, as well as 65 percent lower power than currently available ARM-based chips.

According to Qualcomm, when the company announced the Snapdragon mobile processor, it was the first mobile chipset solution to break the gigahertz (GHz) barrier with multi-mode broadband and multimedia features.

Each subsequent generation of Snapdragon brings new enhancements from Snapdragon’s MSM8x55 platform with an optimized multimedia sub-system to the MSM8x60 platform featuring dual-CPUs running at up to 1.5GHz for the highest levels of Web application and multimedia performance, the company said.

Just as the original Snapdragon revolutionized smartphones with the first 1GHz processor, these new generations of Snapdragon will revolutionize the next wave of mobile entertainment and computing, Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president and group president for Qualcomm said on Monday at the trade show.

Qualcomm said the latest family of Snapdragon chipsets will include the single-core MSM8930, the dual-core MSM8960 and the quad-core APQ8064. All chipsets in the family will integrate a quad-combo of connectivity solutions - WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and FM - and include support for near field communication (NFC), as well as stereoscopic 3D (S3D) video and photo capture and playback.

We believe we have an incredible lineup of chips and software, representing a single platform that OEMs can utilize to create new devices ranging from mass market smartphones with integrated LTE, to tablets, to next generation computing and entertainment devices, said Mollenkopf.