In a move to bolster its mobile open source efforts, Qualcomm is establishing the Qualcomm Innovation Center (QulC), a separate wholly-owned subsidiary.

In a sign of the importance of the QulC, the company's board of directors named Rob Chandhok president of the innovation center. Chandhok is senior vice president of software strategy for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies.

In recent months Qualcomm has stepped up its efforts in open source platforms, even as it has teamed up with Microsoft to help in the design and development of Microsoft's proprietary handsets.

In unveiling the QulC Monday, Qualcomm said it had designated a group of engineers "to optimize open source software with Qualcomm technology." Qualcomm said QulC's engineers will work on important open source segments such as Linux and Webkit initiatives as well as on open source operating systems such as Symbian, Android and Chrome.

"Open source and community-driven software development is becoming increasingly important to the wireless industry," said Chandkok in a statement. "To fulfill this commitment and to provide focus to this effort, Qualcomm has transferred experienced software engineers to QulC."

Qualcomm noted that open software is increasingly being used in connected consumer products across-the-board, from mobile computing devices to traditional handsets and smartphones. The company said its QulC engineers already have intimate knowledge of how to "hardware-optimize the performance of mobile operating systems and the software applications that run on them."

Qualcomm said Chandhok will address Symbian later this week at an event in London to be hosted by the Symbian Foundation.

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