The Low Cost WiFi revolution made by Texas Instruments CC3xxx and Esspressif ESP8266 is not escaped unnoticed by the big boys in the wireless business.
Qualcomm has new product QCA4004 which targets same market but has lot more to offer:
- Dual-band 2.4 GHz/5 GHz
- Low energy
- IPv4/IPv6 Networking
- SSL Client with AES encryption
- RTOS and Toolchain for code on chip
- USB 2.0, SPI/SDIO, UART, HS-UART, I2C, 2xI2S, GPIOs
- Commercial: 0 to 85˚ C (case) Industrial: -40 to 85˚ C (ambient) temperature grades
Here is the flyer and the datasheet.
So far the official quotes for the chip through the official distributors are high, but we know Qualcomm is leader in the wireless solutions and can manufacture efficiently, so once these get in main stream production the prices may drop below ESP8266 prices 🙂
olimex 
Sep 08, 2015 @ 16:04:07
Not sure about the “below ESP8266 prices” – you can’t compete with the Chinese guys by price 😛
Also, I am not using chips in manufacturing, like you do, so my opinion may not be correct, but I do not think that Qualcomm ever targeted the value-price market, their solutions are mostly premium (feature wise and price wise).
Sep 08, 2015 @ 16:11:11
Qualcom chips are in many of the low cost under $1 WiFi solutions, they have enormous budged for development compared to Espressif, so they could come out with something more powerful and better
Sep 08, 2015 @ 21:35:01
Please build in one of these into upcoming Lime board :).
Sep 08, 2015 @ 23:32:58
QCA4004 is not a new product – it was used in Freescale tower variants for Kinetis more than 2 years ago. One could get sources and some documentation from Freescale site too (otherwise impossible from Qualcomm).
Murata do have some sweet WiFi modules based on Broadcom WICED (with STM32F1/F2/F4) – but those are available to customers that order more than 50’000pcs per year.
I really hope that the new variant from Espressif (500DMIPS) will solve most of the issues that ESP8266 have. They stand behind their products and have the knowledge to bring out a good and inexpensive product.
If budget goes above 10USD than MIPS SoCs from Mediatek are viable option.
Sep 09, 2015 @ 10:11:45
The new Espressif chip is really looking promising:
http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/08/03/espressif-is-working-on-a-new-wi-fi-and-bluetooth-le-chip-with-hardware-ssl-support/
Olimex, maybe you should contact them, they were looking for beta testers 😉
Sep 09, 2015 @ 11:36:03
There are some qca4004 modules under $10 the problem is getting the SDK. Marvell mw300 is also promising but no public SDK either and just nearing availability.