MUMBAI: Qualcomm Incorporated will acquire San Diego-based Qualphone Inc., a provider of IP-based Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) embedded client software solutions for mobile devices and interoperability testing (IOT) services for $18 million.

The acquisition of Qualphone's products and resources will help Qualcomm further accelerate the delivery of multimedia-capable, feature-rich 3G solutions on top of the emerging IMS and Multi Media Domain (MMD) architectures to WCDMA/UMTS and CDMA2000 markets. Completion of the acquisition is expected later this month.

Qualphone's IMS client platform provides mobile operators with a technical and commercial framework for offering services using a wide range of integrated and interactive media, voice, text, picture and video technologies. Qualphone's 3G/IP multimedia embedded client framework can be tailored to the specific requirements of individual operators and handset manufacturers, and its end-to-end IOT services help reduce time to market. Qualcomm's acquisition of Qualphone enhances the company's continuing global efforts to provide a highly efficient launch path for new 3G products and services.

"Qualcomm is strongly committed to enabling 3G wireless for worldwide markets, and this acquisition of Qualphone is another instance of our progress in this direction. We look forward to leveraging Qualphone's test service, IMS technology and software development resources to accelerate the delivery of attractive and more feature-rich devices to subscribers in European and other markets," said Qualcomm CDMA Technologies president Dr. Sanjay K. Jha.

"This acquisition is the logical outcome of Qualphone's and Qualcomm's common goal of simplifying the deployment of 3G services around the world. We look forward to uniting our efforts in helping subscribers more quickly benefit from the new wireless capabilities of 3G technology," said Qualphone Inc president and CEO Isaac Eteminan.