In the latest Qualcomm quarterly results earlier this month, Cristiano Amon, President and CEO, said that the semiconductor industry is being impacted by significant macroeconomic headwinds …reports Nishant Arora
Despite several quarters of declining smartphone sales owing to rough macroeconomic conditions, chip major Qualcomm is confident it will weather the global condition with a strong focus on long-term growth, while delivering top-of-the-line features for the overall device ecosystem.
Chris Patrick, SVP and General Manager, Mobile Handset, Qualcomm, said that despite a lot of ups and downs in the global market, the company is “really focused on the long term”.
“Smartphone is the most indispensable device in our lives and we make sure we have the right mix of products for our customers for the long term. Structurally, we don’t see anything really different in the current global scenario for our business,” Patrick said on the sidelines of the company’s flagship ‘Snapdragon Summit 2022’ here.
“We are witnessing the same demand for devices and the same kind of demand for advanced features,” he added.
Qualcomm caters to a premium set of smartphones for most of the major smartphone players globally.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), worldwide smartphone shipments declined 9.7 per cent (year-over-year) to 301.9 million units in the third quarter this year.
The drop marked the largest-ever third quarter decline and the fifth consecutive quarter of decline for the smartphone market as shipments continue to struggle amid weakened global demand and economic uncertainties, said the IDC report.
According to Patrick, some original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are facing the problem, especially those who “hit the accelerator maybe a little bit too hard”.
“We are focusing very hard to provide optimum, next-generation features to our customers across the spectrum, be it gaming, camera, AI and the overall device performance. We’ve taken a big leap on delivering peak performance and we expect OEMs to have an easier time making a balance,” Patrick told IANS.
In the latest Qualcomm quarterly results earlier this month, Cristiano Amon, President and CEO, said that the semiconductor industry is being impacted by significant macroeconomic headwinds and other short-term challenges from which “we’re not immune.
However, “the fundamentals of Qualcomm’s growth drivers remain unchanged with significant opportunities in the coming years,” Amon mentioned.
In handsets, the company recently entered into a new multi-year agreement with Samsung, expanding the use of Snapdragon platforms for future premium Samsung Galaxy products globally.
“We also executed on the changing OEM landscape opportunity, securing key premium and high-tier design wins with our customers in China. Snapdragon has become synonymous with premium mobile experiences worldwide,” said Amon.
Meanwhile, Chip major Qualcomm has launched the world’s first purpose-built, headworn augmented reality platform for VR/AR devices of the future.
Called Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 which is part of the company’s extended reality (XR) portfolio, the multi-chip architecture achieves 50 per cent lower power consumption and 2.5x better AI performance, to enable high-performance, sleek AR glasses.
Snapdragon AR2 is in various stages of development with OEMs including Lenovo, LG, Nreal, OPPO, Pico, QONOQ, Rokid, Sharp, TCL, Vuzix and Xiaomi.
“We built Snapdragon AR2 to address the unique challenges of headworn AR and provide industry-leading processing, AI and connectivity that can fit inside a stylish form factor,” said Hugo Swart, vice president of XR product management, Qualcomm, during the ‘Snapdragon Summit 2022’ here.
With the technical and physical requirements for VR/MR and AR diverging, “Snapdragon AR2 represents another metaverse-defining platform in our XR portfolio to help our OEM partners revolutionise AR glasses,” he added.
Microsoft worked closely with Qualcomm on the platform requirements for Snapdragon AR2.
“Snapdragon AR2 platform innovations will revolutionize headworn AR devices that will transform immersive productivity and collaboration and we look forward to seeing the innovation that Qualcomm and its partners will bring to market,” said Ruben Caballero, Corporate Vice President of Mixed Reality, Devices & Technology, Microsoft.
