For this vignette of a recent episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast, part of the 5G Factor series, analysts Ron Westfall and Shelly Kramer delve into the Qualcomm Investor Day 2021 event highlighted by CEO Cristiano Amon’s Keynote that talked about his vision for the company and propelling Qualcomm’s ongoing success through market diversification. Their conversation focused on:
- Expanding overall revenues based on a projected sevenfold increase in Qualcomm’s addressable markets that are valued at $700 billion within the next decade.
- The key market segments that Qualcomm is targeting for more growth and exercise more mobile ecosystem influence include IoT, the metaverse, automotive, and all things mobile/5G connectivity, compute, and convergence.
- The collaboration with BMW provides the Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride platform to the company’s next gen Advanced driver-assistance (ADAS) systems and autonomous driving platforms. Qualcomm now works with 25 different vehicle OEMs providing Snapdragon chips and software for autonomous driving capabilities.
Ron and Shelly concluded that Qualcomm is now truly a mobile ecosystem company and not simply a mobile chipset supplier, as demonstrated by the car to cloud platform capabilities that Qualcomm now brings to the table.
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Transcript:
Shelly Kramer: All right. Well, speaking of exciting stuff, if you did not get a chance to tune into Qualcomm’s Investor Day 2021 event this last week, I can tell you it was a really great event. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon in his keynote talked about his vision for the company and really talked about the company’s success and how it’s really all about market diversification.
He talked about the opportunities that he and team are looking at are focused on opportunities to expand revenues based on a projected 7X increase in Qualcomm’s addressable markets that are valued at 700 billion within the next decade. This is a really bullish forecast. It led to a surge in Qualcomm on stock price on Tuesday immediately following the event, which isn’t surprising. But the presentation itself, not only Cristiano’s presentation, but other folks from the company throughout the day was just really terrific.
Again, terrific. But there’s not much that the company isn’t leading in, IoT, the metaverse, automotive, some real interesting things happening with regard to Qualcomm and automotive, and then all things connectivity, compute, and convergence. What Cristiano focused on a little bit are among markets, including smartphones, PCs, and the IoT, again, I mentioned there’s huge opportunities come up in automotive.
The company announced a collaboration with BMW to provide the Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride platform to the company’s next gen ADAS system, Advanced driver-assistance systems, and also autonomous driving platforms. Qualcomm now works with, and this is kind of fun fact that I think a lot of people don’t know, Qualcomm now works with 25 different vehicle OEMs providing Snapdragon chips and software for autonomous driving capabilities. They also talked about moving beyond chips and really, again, going into these addressable market opportunities.
These include RF front end. Our colleague and fellow analyst Olivier Blanchard has written extensively about RFFE. But the other opportunities include technologies for handsets, RF front end, automotive, as I mentioned, and the IoT. Really some of the most significant opportunities that Cristiano identified were the convergence of mobile and PCs, the metaverse for various applications, wireless fiber, and then the industrial IoT. And really lastly, pardon me, one of the things that he talked about is not…
What we’re accomplishing here is not enabled by 5G alone, but it’s how we define 5G that connects everything to the cloud 100% of the time. Qualcomm is positioned at the intersection of all these trends. Really presented a great presentation looking at Qualcomm’s growth beyond handsets. One of the things that we looked at in terms of growth from fiscal year 2020 to ’21 in the RF front end category, they’re up 76%. In the automotive category, Qualcomm’s up 51%. In the IoT category, up 67%.
I’ll include some screenshots from that keynote presentation and some other keynote presentations in my show notes for this, but it was a really interesting presentation. It’s no surprise that Qualcomm is having the success that it’s having. And again, it’s all about smart diversification, not putting all your eggs in one basket, but it was really great to see.
Ron Westfall: Yeah, definitely Qualcomm is extending its overall ecosystem influence. It’s stepping out beyond, okay, we’re a chip set company. We’re truly a mobile ecosystem company. I think pointing to, again, that BMW alliance, that I think also emphasized the car to cloud platform capabilities that Qualcomm brings to the table. Obviously the cloud’s going to be a major instrument or capability in terms of advancing the ADAS capabilities for example. And also, it’s showing that Qualcomm is stepping up in terms of these segments.
For example, in the automotive segment, Nvidia and Intel already had pretty high profile. But now, I think Qualcomm is definitely part of that top tier of profile players in terms of advancing automotive capabilities, whether it’s autonomous driving or infotainment capabilities, you name it. Anything that’s going to make cars smarter and safer will definitely be most welcomed. I think it’s also interesting that they’re also addressing the metaverse possibility. We also argued about that when Facebook renamed itself Meta.
A little skeptical about its near-term impact. Longer term, it can have I think potentially more impact, especially as the capabilities become more proven. I’m anticipating that you would need at least 90 milliseconds latency to make it work on a truly regionally distributed, let alone global basis on a consistent, reliable basis. Otherwise, you get too much jitter and I think people will be put off by it. Metaverse, there’s a risk there’ll be a 3D TV 2.0. Something very hyped. People rushing out to find out more about it.
They try it out and they’re like, “Ugh, never mind.” We saw what happened to 3D TVs, anybody with one. We’ll see. Right now, I’m more skeptical about it than others. But hey, I’ll definitely like to be proven wrong. I’d just like to see the headsets become a lot more slimmer and user friendly if metaverse is really going to make inroads across the general public. We’ll wait with unbated breath.
Shelly Kramer: I’m right there with you. I feel like in the last 30 days alone perhaps the most overused term is the metaverse. I’m already over it.
Ron Westfall: Right, Yeah. The hype cycle’s already gone through.
Shelly Kramer: Yeah, exactly.
Author Information
Ron is an experienced, customer-focused research expert and analyst, with over 20 years of experience in the digital and IT transformation markets, working with businesses to drive consistent revenue and sales growth.
He is a recognized authority at tracking the evolution of and identifying the key disruptive trends within the service enablement ecosystem, including a wide range of topics across software and services, infrastructure, 5G communications, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), analytics, security, cloud computing, revenue management, and regulatory issues.
Prior to his work with The Futurum Group, Ron worked with GlobalData Technology creating syndicated and custom research across a wide variety of technical fields. His work with Current Analysis focused on the broadband and service provider infrastructure markets.
Ron holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from University of Nevada — Las Vegas and a Bachelor of Arts in political science/government from William and Mary.
