Qualcomm's new chip to push 5G phone prices to below ₹8,000: India president

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 chipset, which will be launched in India before other global markets, will enable 5G devices to be priced at points lower than ₹8,000 ($100), top executives at the chipset design company told Mint in an exclusive interaction.

“This is an India-first chip, and it is going to other markets from here, for instance, Latin America and Central Asia, with a faster ramp-up in India, by Q4 this year," Qualcomm India president Savi Soin said. “We want to bring the 5G devices down to ₹8,000 and below, such that technology becomes more affordable. Our goal would be that hopefully, in a year from now, to get generative AI on lower-tier devices."

The Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 chipset is being adopted by several smartphone makers, starting with Xiaomi, and this will enable them to bring out low-cost 5G phones by the end of this year or the January-March quarter.

Also Read: Qualcomm may replicate China model in India: Soin

“We are excited to be working with Qualcomm Technologies to enable access to gigabit-fast connectivity for users," said Muralikrishnan B, president of Xiaomi India. “Many people have yet to experience the benefits of 5G and thanks to Snapdragon 4s Gen 2, Xiaomi can bring 5G connectivity to a broader audience to help reshape the way the world connects and interacts."

Soin confirmed at a roundtable that the company is working with multiple brands to proliferate the chipset, “including some new ones for India."

At this moment, the processor will look to refine 5G usability in the mainstream ranges. Chris Patrick, global senior vice-president and general manager for handsets, watches and audio products at Qualcomm, said the chipset in question “will support a suitable experience that matches the pedigree of 5G connectivity, where the actual benefits are 5G applications."

Reducing costs

One key aspect of the new chipset will be to reduce the overall cost for companies that partner with Qualcomm. Srini Maddali, senior vice-president of engineering at Qualcomm, added at a media roundtable that the chipmaker will make efforts to help rationalise manufacturing costs by offering reference designs and working closely with brands through the chipmaker’s customer engineering teams.

“The cost addition happens as brands work to integrate custom software, modem interfaces and more. We hope that our design template of the new chip will help reduce the overall manufacturing cost for brands as well, but it’s difficult to put a number on how big an impact this will be due to the wide range of ways in which companies make their phones," Maddali added.

At this moment, however, budget smartphones will showcase a gulf in class in terms of their AI features.

Patrick added that the company is evaluating how best to bring AI applications down from flagship tiers to budget ranges.

“Our focus with generative AI right now remains in the Snapdragon 8 and Snapdragon 7 tiers, which are our flagship and premium processors. But the proliferation will happen—only until a few years ago, the current Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 chip would’ve qualified as a premium product. We’re trying to understand how best this can be done," he said.

Soin underlined that this could take about a year.

Smartphones built on the chipset will have dual band navIC for better position accuracy, AI-enhanced audio and smoother gaming and video streaming experience for consumers.

Car connectivity

The US chipmaker, which competes with Taiwanese rival Mediatek, is aggressively looking at the automotive segment—including electric and internal combustion engine-based two-, three- and four-wheeler vehicles—to sell its platform along with the chipset.

“Connectivity should be in all vehicles and that strategy has to converge with the phone, which is what we’re seeing in China and that’s what is being demanded by auto customers in India," Soin noted.

Also Read: Qualcomm to power luxury car infotainment systems for Mercedes and BMW. Here’s how

On the competition, Soin said Qualcomm’s development teams in Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru work directly with mobile or auto makers rather than through teams sitting out of other countries, which makes their proposition to Indian businesses better. Maddali underlined that Qualcomm’s India team now has 15,000 engineers—which Patrick affirmed is “either the biggest, or the second largest, for the company outside of the San Diego headquarters."

Qualcomm will continue to invest in India by increasing the headcount of engineers and creating capacities for global deployment, besides driving developers and semiconductor partners, Soin added.

Qualcomm’s chipset for Windows laptops will also undergo an expansion into other markets even as India provides a massive upside in the coming years.

“The next two years we’re expecting around at least a 15% growth since there is a large installed base of PCs that are waiting for a refresh," said Kedar Kondap, senior vice president for compute and gaming.

Kondap pointed to three inflection points that will lead to a ramp-up of the Indian PC market, beginning with the transition of Windows 10 devices to Windows 11, the refresh cycle of laptops bought during Covid in 2020-21, and more crucially, the advent of AI in personal computers, which he said will drive a behavioural change in consumers and lead to higher adoption of AI-based PCs.