HDMI could be on borrowed time as Qualcomm takes concerted steps closer to rolling out new-generation wireless data transmission technology pioneered by Wilocity.
Qualcomm is working on a little something that could in time render HDMI dead, buried and forgotten. Some folk are only just getting used to the HDMI standard, yet it seems the days a numbered for this particular piece of wired technology.
The reason being that Wilocity has been now been officially hijacked by Qualcomm. And as Wilocity is the brains behind WiGig, this now means Qualcomm will be marrying Wi-Fi and 802.11ad into single ships and implanting them into all manner of mobile devices.
“WiGig will play an important role in Qualcomm’s strategy to address consumers’ increasingly sophisticated smartphone, tablet and computing requirements,” beamed Qualcomm bigwig Amir Faintuch.
It’s said that the deal cost Qualcomm in the region of $300 million, though they haven’t yet confirmed any of the details of terms. Wilocity has previously worked with the likes of Cisco and Dell, earning a reputation as a true pioneer in the field of super-fast wireless data transmission.
“A little-known fact is that WiGig began during a meeting on Microsoft’s campus with several other companies, including Wilocity,” said Microsoft’s Billy Anders.
“It’s gratifying to see the rapid evolution of this technology, and this development indicates a rapid proliferation of WiGig.”
Despite having a limited range of only a couple of meters max, WiGig has the ability to transmit as speeds of 7GB per second. As such, this could technically mean that if and when it gets implanted in Smartphones and tablet PCs, the device’s respective owner would be able to beam 4K video directly to their TV with no need for wires of any kind.
Hence the reason we could be looking at the slow but certain death of HDMI.
That being said, we predicted the same early demise for the humble SCART lead about a decade ago and there are still billions of the things doing the rounds.
