App Store who? Android Market what? Qualcomm's BREW Platform has Transacted over $3 Billion in App Sales
Recently, Qualcomm announced that over $3 Billion worth of transactions have occurred on its platform through app purchases on the millions of phones with BREW. Though that’s over the course of 9 years, it’s important to realize that there are only 18,000 applications on BREW across even fewer developers, according to Qualcomm. So the developers responsible for those applications have made a killing.
I met with Qualcomm at GDC and they’re quite proud of their success, citing a recent report from AT&T in which they committed to using BREW as the primary OS for all “non-Smartphones” (Android, iPhone, Symbian, WinMo). AT&T added that only 30% of its customers are buying Smartphones, and the “second tier” of customers will use BREW. To top it off, AT&T said that second tier of phones is growing faster than the Smartphone market.
Qualcomm, however, doesn’t care – because it benefits regardless of whether you buy a smartphone or a BREW-based device. They are a chipset manufacturer and used in many of the smartphones on the market. Increasingly, mobile OS companies are putting their faith in Qualcomm’s new SnapDragon processor. It will be the processor of record for Windows Phone, most Android phones (including the Nexus One), Palm, and Symbian.