Irwin Jacobs & Andrew Viterbi: Qualcomm's Pioneering Founders

Qualcomm's founders, Irwin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi, exemplify how top-tier academic expertise can lead to ideas with transformative global impact. With a bold vision that challenged industry norms, they changed the trajectory of global mobile communications and established Qualcomm as a major force in the semiconductor industry. Let's take a closer look.

• Extensive educational backgrounds: Jacobs and Viterbi both earned advanced degrees in electrical engineering and spent several years as professors, laying the groundwork for their future successes.

• Linkabit founding: Jacobs and Viterbi's paths converged in 1968 as they co-founded Linkabit in 1968, a consulting firm specializing in advanced communication technologies.

• Qualcomm's mission: Qualcomm was founded in 1985, and made its breakthrough driven by the founders' strong conviction in the potential of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology.

Irwin Jacobs was born in 1933 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. From an early age, Jacobs took his education seriously, earning him a place at Cornell University. Initially following his high school guidance counselor's advice, Jacobs enrolled in the School of Hotel Administration, as he was told there was no future in science or engineering. However, after some teasing from his roommate about the simplicity of his classes, he quickly changed his path. The change of course was right from the beginning as Jacobs went on to earn a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, followed by a Master's and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1959.

After completing his education, Jacobs continued on the same path, starting his career as an assistant and later associate professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT. While deepening his expertise in the field of digital communication, Jacobs co-authored the widely used textbook "Principles of Communication Engineering" with John Wozencraft, published in 1965. This book became a seminal work in the field of digital communications and is still regarded as a classic. Jacobs' time at MIT, from 1959 to 1966, was a formative period that honed the skills and knowledge that would later propel him into the entrepreneurial world.

In 1966, Jacobs was recruited by the University of Southern California (USC) to help launch a new engineering school. A couple of years after arriving in California, Jacobs and a couple of colleagues teamed up for a new challenge outside of the classrooms.

Andrew Viterbi was born in 1935 in Bergamo, Italy, to a Jewish family. Facing the rise of fascism in Europe, his family emigrated to the United States in 1939, settling in Boston, Massachusetts. Viterbi displayed a natural talent and strong interest in mathematics and science, which led him to MIT, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering in 1957, followed by a Master's degree in 1958. Following his studies at MIT, he pursued a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC), completing it in 1962.

After completing his doctorate, Viterbi began his academic career at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he served as a professor of electrical engineering. During his time at UCLA, Viterbi developed the Viterbi algorithm, published in 1967. This method for decoding convolutional codes became essential in correcting errors in digital communication, with applications ranging from satellite communication to mobile phones and even DNA sequencing. Viterbi's extensive academic background set him up for what was to come.

In 1968, Jacobs and Viterbi crossed paths and, alongside Leonard Kleinrock, co-founded Linkabit, a consultant company focusing on advanced digital communication technologies. Linkabit primarily focused on government contracts, particularly in the defense sector, where they developed technologies for secure and efficient satellite communications.

After initially balancing their consultancy work with academic careers, Jacobs left in 1971 and Viterbi in 1973, to focus fully on Linkabit. Between 1971 and 1979, the company grew significantly, increasing its annual revenues from $1 million to $15 million, with Walmart as its most prominent client. By 1980, Linkabit had attracted interest from larger companies and was sold to M/A-COM, a Massachusetts-based defense contractor. Despite the sale, Jacobs and Viterbi continued to serve as consultants before departing in 1985 to pursue more ambitious ventures.

In July 1985, former professors Irwin Jacobs, Andrew Viterbi, and five colleagues from their previous venture founded Qualcomm – a name derived from their commitment to creating "QUAlity COMMunications." Jacobs took on the role of CEO, while Viterbi became the CTO. Initially, Qualcomm followed in Linkabit’s footsteps, primarily working on government and defense projects. However, after a few years, the company increasingly shifted its focus toward researching CDMA technology, which they strongly believed in, over the industry-preferred Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), developed by Ericsson.

In short, CDMA allows multiple users to share the same frequency band simultaneously by assigning unique codes to each communication, while TDMA divides the frequency into time slots, with each user occupying a slot in rotation. Despite its greater complexity, Qualcomm argued that CDMA offers greater capacity and efficiency, especially for high-demand networks, making it a superior long-term solution for mobile communication.

In its early years, Qualcomm focused on proving CDMA's viability in commercial applications, facing significant industry resistance. Through rigorous testing and demonstrations, the company proved that CDMA offered superior performance in call quality, network capacity, and data transmission. Their persistence paid off in the 1990s when major U.S. carriers such as Sprint (acquired by T-Mobile in 2020) and Verizon adopted CDMA for their networks, a landmark victory that helped CDMA become the foundation of all 3G cellular networks.

This breakthrough built Qualcomm's reputation as an industry pioneer and laid the groundwork for future innovations, not only in 4G and 5G technology but also across a broad spectrum of semiconductor products, and software solutions.

Without the extensive backgrounds of Jacobs and Viterbi in digital communications, the success of Qualcomm would not have been possible. Early on, the company followed its bold vision that defied industry norms and ultimately revolutionized the telecommunications landscape. Jacobs, as CEO until 2005 and Chairman until 2009, and Viterbi, as CTO and Vice Chairman until 2000, were instrumental in shaping Qualcomm's growth and direction. Their leadership and technological foresight profoundly influenced both the company and the future of wireless connectivity, reshaping the trajectory of the global mobile networks we rely on today.

Further reading: Cristiano Amon: Qualcomm's 5G Specialist CEO