News Broadcasting
Qualcomm to acquire mobile software provider – Qualphone Inc for $18 million
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.
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
