In what has to be a buy them before they better you in the race for Mobile High Speed Internet, Qualcomm has bought Flarion for 267 million in stock and another 205 million in performance based payments. Qualcomm also assumes the options and warrants at fair value of $128 million.
Flarion has tested their OFDMA technology successfully with Nextel. Qualcomm has always had a very cozy relationship with Sprint. This marriage means that Sprint likely will be the first carrier to advance high speed wireless, giving Qualcomm a market lead over the WiMax gang which has yet to agree on a fixed standard let alone a mobile one.
This also means the carriage on Q powered networks of VoIP and multimedia just got supercharged.
To me it sounds like Qualcomm got a great deal on a technology and leadership team that had great potential and yet was stuck forever in trials and couldn’t get the big contract it needed. Given how long it had been kicking around, my guess is the Flarion investors were in need of a liquidity event, and Qualcomm gave them that.
Update–About thirty minutes after my post yesterday, Om chimed in with comments that made me feel I was looking in the mirror.