The new head of Qualcomm Inc believes that by next year his company will have just the chip for laptop makers, wondering how they can compete with Apple Inc. The laptop was introduced using a central processor chip that claims longer battery life. Longtime processor suppliers Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have no chips as energy efficient as Apple’s. Qualcomm Chief Executive Cristiano Amon told Reuters on Thursday that he believes his company may have the best chip on the market with the help of a team of chip architects who previously worked on the Apple chip. But now work at Qualcomm.
In his first interview since taking the top job in San Diego, California Qualcomm, Amon also said that the company is also relying on revenue growth from China to power its core smartphone chip business despite political tensions. “We will go big in China,” he said, adding that the US sanctions on Huawei Technologies Co Ltd give Qualcomm an opportunity to generate a lot of revenue. Amon said the cornerstone of their strategy comes from lessons learned in the smartphone chip market: simply providing modem chips for the phone’s wireless data connectivity was not enough. Qualcomm was also required to provide the brains to turn phones into computers, which it now does for most premium Android devices.
Now, as Qualcomm looks to push 5G connectivity into laptops, it’s pairing a modem with a powerful central processor unit, or CPU, Amon said. Instead of using computing core blueprints from longtime partner Arm Ltd., as it now does for smartphones, Qualcomm concluded that it would need custom-designed chips if its customers wanted to rival the new laptops from Apple. would be required. As head of Qualcomm’s chip division, Amon led this year’s $1.4 billion acquisition of startup Nuvia, whose ex-Apple founders help design those Apple laptop chips before going on to form the startup. Qualcomm will start selling Nuvia-based laptop chips next year.
Amon said, “We needed pioneering performance for a battery-powered device. If Arm, with whom we’ve had a relationship for years, eventually develops a CPU we can build ourselves, we can always get a license from Arm.” There is an option to take.” Arm is in the midst of being bought by Nvidia Corp (nvidia.o) for $40 billion, a merger that Qualcomm has objected to with regulators.
Amon said Qualcomm has no plans to build its products to enter the other big market for CPUs — data centers for cloud computing companies. But it will license Nuvia’s designs to cloud computing companies that want to make their own chips, which could put it in competition with parts of Arm. “We are keen to leverage Nuvia CPU assets to partner with companies that are interested as they build their data center solutions,” Amon said.
branding challenge
Phone chips accounted for $12.8 billion of the $16.5 billion in chip revenue in its most recent fiscal year. Some of Qualcomm’s best customers, such as phone maker Xiaomi Corp, are in China. Qualcomm is counting on revenue growth as its Android handset customers swoop in on former users of Huawei’s phone, which was forced out of the handset market by Washington’s sanctions. Kevin Crewell, principal analyst at TIRIAS Research, called it a “political mine” due to rising US-China tensions. But Amon said the company can do business there as usual.
“We license our technology – we don’t have to do forced joint ventures with technology transfer. Our customers in China exist with their own agreements, so you see respect for American intellectual property,” he said. Another big challenge for Amon will be hanging around as a customer for Apple. Qualcomm’s modem chips are now in all Apple iPhone 12 models. A fierce legal battle. Apple sued Qualcomm in 2017, but eventually dropped its claims and signed chip supply and patent licensing agreements with Qualcomm in 2019. Apple is now designing chips to displace Qualcomm’s communications chips in iPhones.
“The biggest overhang for Qualcomm’s long-term stock multiple is the concern that right now, it’s about as good as it gets, because they’re all shipping in iPhones, but someday, Apple will be shipping those chips internally.” Will do,” said Michael Walkley, a senior analyst at Canaccord Genuity Group. Amon said Qualcomm has decades of experience designing modem chips, which would be difficult for any rival to replicate, and the void in the Android market left behind by Huawei creates new revenue opportunities for Qualcomm. “For the premium tier alone, the Huawei addressable market is as big as the opportunity Apple has for us,” Amon said.
Another challenge for Amon, a brilliant executive who is energetic during keynote presentations, would be that Qualcomm doesn’t know consumers as well as Intel or Nvidia even in Qualcomm’s hometown. “I flew into San Diego and met an Uber driver at the airport and told him I was going to Qualcomm. He said, ‘You mean the stadium?'” Crewell said, referring to the football field that was formerly San Diego. Diego was the home of the Chargers. Amon has launched a new branding program to try to replace the company’s Snapdragon smartphone chips. “We have a mature smartphone industry today. People care what’s behind the glass,” he said.
read all Breaking Newshandjob today’s fresh news and coronavirus news Here
.