Qualcomm's AllPlay platform opens up wireless streaming

SAN DIEGO -- Qualcomm is pushing forward its notion of the "Internet of everything" with a new media-streaming platform called AllPlay designed to allow people to wirelessly stream music from mobile apps to multiple speakers in their home.

AllPlay, announced by Qualcomm CEO and Chairman Paul Jacobs at the company's Uplinq developer conference Wednesday, is targeted at developers who can use the coming-soon software developer kit to build wireless streaming capabilities into their iOS and Android applications.

AllPlay is built atop AllJoyn, the chipmaker's open software framework for connecting proximal devices. In essence, AllPlay is Qualcomm's version of Apple's Airplay but with the intention of being open and more universally accessible.

Qualcomm partner Rhapsody demonstrated the platform's functionality during the keynote. Jon Irwin, president of the digital music service, showed off a version of the Rhapsody application integrated with AllPlay that was capable of wirelessly streaming tracks to Wi-Fi connected speakers in the auditorium. Irwin highlighted some of AllPlay's more sophisticated features such as the ability to stream different songs to different speakers, and to control the volume of speakers simultaneously or on a one-off basis.

Irwin said that Rhapsody wants its customers to be able to listen to any music they want on any speaker in their home, regardless of brand.

Unfortunately, Irwin's vision is more fantasy than reality for the time being, as AllPlay-compatible speakers are not yet commercially available. A company spokesperson said that consumer electronic companies and streaming content services have expressed interest in implementing AllPlay into their product offerings.

The AllPlay SDK will be made available to developers before the end of the year, Jacobs said.

Update, 3:00 p.m. PT: With additional information on speaker availability.