Qualcomm has announced that it will acquire San Diego-based Qualphone Inc., a leading provider of IP-based Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) embedded client software solutions for mobile devices and interoperability testing (IOT) services. 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 will pay approximately US$18mn in cash for Qualphone.