SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook and Qualcomm are working together on leveraging LTE Broadcast to streamline the update process for the popular social media application.
Jay Parikh, vice president of infrastructure at Facebook, said the two companies have been partners for years and that they’ve just begun to scratch the surface of what can be done with LTE Broadcast.
In terms of helping support the frequent updates to Facebook’s mobile platform, Parikh saw LTE Broadcast as uniquely equipped to handle the massive amounts of data transmission that goes along with that process.
Facebook also wants to use Qualcomm’s LTE Direct proximal protocol to start “serendipitous interactions” between users, merchants and others using video and other rich content that can be transmitted via LTE. LTE Direct has about a half-mile radius and relies solely on LTE standards.
Parikh said LTE Broadcast and LTE Direct “will unlock new use cases for our application.”
Talk of Facebook’s and Qualcomm’s work to leverage LTE Broadcast came along with Qualcomm announcing wider availability for its LTE Broadcast SDK. Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said that network operators are combining the SDK with Qualcomm’s middleware to build applications and that another 30-plus developers are working with the SDK today.
Parikh further elaborated on Qualcomm’s contributions to its mobile performance. He talked up optimizations that have come from Facebook’s work with Qualcomm, specifically mentioning the fast scrolling on the Facebook app and smoother video playback on Instagram, all leveraging software and hardware built into Snapdragon.
Parikh said that more than 400 million Facebook users only access the social network via mobile.
Filed Under: Infrastructure