Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

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Qualcomm's Mobile Chief Talks About Newest Processor, RF Chips and AR/VR
By: TheStreet | July 15, 2020

• Alex Katouzian, head of Qualcomm's Mobile Business Unit, talked at length about Qualcomm's efforts to differentiate its offerings for smartphones, AR/VR headsets and notebooks.

A talk with Qualcomm (QCOM) about its chip R&D work can end up heading in some very different directions relative to where it would have gone in, say, 2015.

Though Qualcomm still gets a large portion of its chip revenue from smartphone processors and modems, it also now has large RF, automotive, Wi-Fi networking and IoT chip businesses, and has also expanded into fields such as processors for notebooks and AR/VR headsets.

Such diversification is a big reason why Qualcomm guided in April for its chip unit -- it’s known as Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, or QCT -- to see annual revenue growth in the June quarter even though the company also forecast global phone shipments would drop about 30% annually due to COVID-19.

Earlier this week, I talked with Alex Katouzian, the general manager of Qualcomm’s Mobile Business Unit, about both near-term demand and Qualcomm’s chip efforts in several fields. The talk came just before Qualcomm officially announced the Snapdragon 865 Plus, an evolutionary upgrade to its flagship mobile processor (the Snapdragon 865) that’s promised to deliver 10% increases in CPU and GPU performance.

Among other things, Katouzian oversees Qualcomm’s offerings for mobile phones, IoT devices, notebooks and head-mounted displays. Here are his comments on several subjects of interest, slightly edited for clarity.

On the extent to which the Snapdragon 865 Plus will coexist with the standard Snapdragon 865 in Android phone lineups during the second half of 2020.

“I think there’s going to be room enough for both of them...I think the previous phones launched on the 865, the OEMs try to prolong that life as much as possible. Because especially nowadays, when you went through [an economic downturn] due to the coronavirus situation where buying got suppressed, and is starting to come back. I think the July-August timeframe is going to see a rise [in demand].

“So I think they’re gonna try to prolong the 865, maybe with more SKUs, and try to compete in an environment where more competitive phones are going to come out as well. And then refresh their old 865 phones. I guess in our business, 6 months, 9 months is old already.



“You try to refresh those phones with even better performance capability, maybe slightly new form factors, things like that. And continue the selling capability of the 865. That chip by itself has really good performance. We pretty much outperform anyone that’s out there on almost every parameter. Obviously [Apple’s] CPU performance would be better because of their customized solution versus standard ARM...but for the most part, it was really, really, a good-performing solution...

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