In a big to strengthen its chipset business, Qualcomm has revealed it is to launch a mobile development platform – handily known as MDP – to help studios maximise the performance of its apps.

Specifically designed to work with Qualcomm's 1GHz MSM8655 chipset, the firm says the MDP (pictured) will offer support for both Android and Brew based apps, with BSQUARE set to distribute the platform when it launches in Q4 2010.

"First generation Snapdragon chipsets are currently in more than 20 commercial smartphones, smartbooks and other connected devices, with more than 100 additional designs in development," said VP of product management Raj Talluri.

"The Snapdragon MDP will offer developers a powerful platform that utilizes our latest Snapdragon chipset, the MSM8655 chipset, which delivers a new level of multimedia performance and will help enable the global development community in their efforts to deliver exciting new mobile applications taking advantage of all the hardware capabilities that Snapdragon devices can offer."

Snapping up the dragon

As such, the MDP unit will take advantage of the chipset's power, coming with a 3.8" WVGA multi-touch capacitive touchscreen, dual cameras including a 12MP main camera, 16mm loudspeakers, accelerometer and gyroscope and 512MB of RAM.

"The Snapdragon MDP will help application developers bring their solutions to a market clamouring for new mobile applications," added VP of market development at BSQUARE, Michael Tidwell.

"Qualcomm's chipset technology combined with BSQUARE's world class support, software services and TestQuest testing automation tools will help developers meet this demand as quickly as possible."

The MDP can be pre-ordered from BSQUARE's website, with a second generation MDP based on the dual core MSM8660 expected in the first half of 2011.