Dr. Paul E. Jacobs
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
He was an early proponent of embedding TCP/IP in CDMA phones at a time when the industry thought of mobile phones purely as mobile voice devices, and worked with operators and industry partners to develop technology that allowed CDMA-based devices to directly connect to the Internet. Dr. Jacobs first conceived of deploying voice over Internet protocol as the basis for push-to-talk capabilities over CDMA networks. This became QChat™, which was licensed by Nextel prior to its merger with Sprint. More recently, he helped develop many of the technical concepts for the MediaFLO system along with the business strategy for commercialising this new mobile broadcast solution.
Dr. Jacobs has also been responsible for establishing and/or managing joint ventures with Sony, Microsoft and Ford and, following the sale of the handset division, he served as CEO of QCP Incorporated, a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm, which provided contract design and distribution services to Kyocera Wireless.
Most recently, Dr. Jacobs was executive vice president and group president of QWI. In this role, Jacobs oversaw Qualcomm Technology Licensing, Qualcomm Internet Service, MediaFLO™ USA Inc. and MediaFLO technology development, Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Qualcomm Wireless Business Solutions, Qualcomm Government Technologies and Qualcomm Technology & Ventures. Dr. Jacobs was also responsible for overseeing the corporate marketing functions and the Company's standards organisation.
Dr. Jacobs received his bachelor's (1984) and master's (1986) degrees and his Ph.D. (1989) in electrical engineering from the University of California-Berkeley, and subsequently endowed the 'Paul and Stacy Jacobs Distinguished Professor of Engineering' chair at the school. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa, Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi honour societies. Dr. Jacobs serves on the boards of A123Systems, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the University of California-Berkeley, College of Engineering; the Advisory Board of University of California-San Diego, Jacobs School of Engineering; and the Young President's Organisation.
