Qualcomm has acquired Wilocity to improve Wi-Fi speeds

Qualcomm on Wednesday announced it bought startup chipmaker Wilocity to help it provide a speedier, but shorter-distance flavor of wireless technology in more devices. Wilocity, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., and founded in 2007, develops chips using a newer type of Wi-Fi called WiGig that runs on a relatively high radio frequency, at 60 gigahertz. WiGig, an industrywide standard backed by the Wi-Fi Alliance industry group, offers speeds several times faster than traditional Wi-Fi, but is only effective at short distances, so could work well within a single room. Because of its speedy connection, WiGig is seen as a potential replacement for physical cables still necessary to connect devices such as tablets or PCs to large displays or televisions. In stating its goal to eliminate cables from all PCs by 2016, Intel pointed to WiGig as one of the potential answers. Qualcomm likewise recognizes its importance. “We and our partners believe in this technology strongly,” Qualcomm executive Cormac Conroy told CNET in an interview Wednesday. “We think it’s important to the industry.” The company declined to disclose financial details of the deal. The capabilities of Wilocity’s chips make them useful for heavy-lifting functions that can take place in a small area, such as streaming 4K video from a smartphone to a television with minimal lag, or wirelessly docking a tablet to a large display, keyboard, and mouse. It wouldn’t be useful for transferring the video across a house or large office, like you’re able to with a traditional Wi-Fi network, which boasts a longer range, but much lower speeds.