Qualcomm held its biggest launch event in India “Snapdragon for India” focused on solutions designed from scratch in India and for India. Qualcomm announced Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 as a low-cost 5G mobile platform capable of 1 Gigabit 5G speeds based on the latest 3GPP Release 17 standards optimized for 5G SA (Standalone) architecture. With this new chipset, Qualcomm, along with its OEM partners is working towards bringing sub-$99 5G smartphones to drive 5G adoption in emerging markets such as India. At the event, Neil Shah, VP of Research at Counterpoint Research, sat down with Savi Soin, SVP and President of Qualcomm India, to talk about Qualcomm’s strategy for India, democratizing 5G and AI for the mass market, strategic partnerships, localizing for India and much more.

The Interview

Key Takeaways from the Discussion

Qualcomm’s Strategy for Emerging Markets Like India

Products Designed and Developed in India:

• The Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 5G SoC is the first product designed in India, for India.
• It focuses on addressing the unique needs of Indian consumers.
• Localization and customization are key elements of Qualcomm’s India strategy.
• Soin emphasizes building trust and relationships in business operations.

Affordable 5G Devices to Empower the Masses:

• Qualcomm is collaborating with OEMs and ODMs to optimize the device BoM cost and deliver a sub-$99 5G smartphone.
• Xiaomi is the first partner to announce plans to launch affordable 5G smartphones based on the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 platform by the end of this year and other vendors to follow.
• The strategy focuses on bridging the digital divide and upgrading hundreds of millions of feature phone and 4G users to 5G smartphones.

Unique Advantage of Having the Development Team in India:

• Qualcomm India directly engages with ODMs, OEMs, Mobile Operators and other ecosystem players’ development teams to drive innovation and implement solutions.
• The Qualcomm engineering team is based out of India with core development centers in Hyderabad and Bangalore. Qualcomm will now be deeply involved in designing and developing compute and connectivity solutions for the Indian market as well as globally.
• Qualcomm is also focusing on India-specific developer strategies from developer conference to evangelism to work with them and optimize different applications and services for the Indian ecosystem for Qualcomm’s platforms benefitting everyone from device vendors to mobile operators to consumers.

Analyst takeaways

• This is a pivotal moment for the Indian mobile ecosystem to drive 5G adoption to the masses.
• More than 600 million mobile phone users in India still use a 4G smartphone. Almost 40% of those users want an affordable but good spec 5G smartphone below $99 or INR 10,000.
• So far, the most affordable 5G solutions in the market were not specifically designed or optimized for the Indian ecosystem and warranted some amount of subsidies and promotions from OEMs and mobile operators to break the sub-$99 (or INR 10,000) barrier.
• The Qualcomm Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 will help democratize 5G connectivity and optimized computing experiences for the masses and overcome the sub-$99 barrier with OEM partners.
• This is great news for mobile operators such as Jio and Airtel as the chipset is optimized with their networks and will help many 2G, 3G and 4G users get across the chasm and move to a more efficient and capable 5G network.