Qualcomm has acquired Wilocity to improve Wi-Fi speeds

Qualcomm confirmed on Wednesday that it is buying gigabit wireless specialist Wilocity in a move that puts the mobile chipmaker firmly behind the new WiGig standard. At some point next year, we will start seeing the first WiGig chipsets in smartphones and other mobile devices, said Tal Tamir, former CEO of Wilocity and now VP of product management for Qualcomm’s Atheros division. The deal closed this morning, but Qualcomm did not reveal a purchase price for the Israeli company, though earlier reports stated the parties were negotiating in the $300 million range. The deal is big boost for the WiGig IEEE 802.11ad standard, which is now under of the Wi-Fi umbrella. Unlike Wi-Fi, WiGig is intended to be a much more close-range technology similar to Bluetooth. But unlike Bluetooth, WiGig will support multigigabit transfer speeds by tapping into a broad range of frequencies in the 60 GHz bands.