The News: Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon kicked off IFA 2022, western Europe’s largest consumer electronics show, Friday morning with a keynote presentation announcing several new partnerships. The chipmaker signed a multi-year agreement with Meta to develop and deliver metaverse experiences leveraging the Snapdragon XR platforms. Amon also announced a partnership with Bose for improved wireless audio devices for the home, the car and on the go. Read more about the announcements on Qualcomm’s website.
Qualcomm Makes Big Announcements at IFA 2022
Analyst Take: One thing is clear from the announcements on Friday at IFA 2022: Qualcomm is quickly gaining a reputation as the chipmaker to partner with to drive innovation for the future. The partnerships that Amon announced will leverage Qualcomm’s technologies to provide richer consumer experiences and were made in concert with companies doing exciting and challenging work. Here is a brief overview of what was announced:
Meta and Qualcomm are a Match
In an effort to “deepen the technical collaboration” Meta and Qualcomm signed a multi-year strategic agreement to develop experiences for the metaverse using the Snapdragon XR platforms for the Meta Quest platform. The companies will work in conjunction to create technologies that will accelerate the production of the metaverse. This partnership doubles down on earlier announcements made by Facebook and Qualcomm, showing a greater level of commitment and collaboration.
While Meta does have a large team of engineers that have been working on the metaverse, this partnership is promising. The virtual reality aspect of the metaverse brings new challenges that Qualcomm’s powerful chipsets and platforms will play a role in helping Meta solve. With their breadth and depth of knowledge and expertise in the XR space, it makes sense to see Qualcomm partner with Meta on this next-generation technology—and for Meta it makes sense to find key partners to help it realize its vision for the Metaverse, which has some challenges like many new and disruptive technologies.
Bose and Qualcomm SoCs Bring the Noise
Amon also announced a broadened partnership with Bose to develop wireless audio devices anywhere someone might want to listen. Bose will use Qualcomm S5 Audio SoCs in future audio devices deliver richer user experiences for music, calls, gaming, and more. Qualcomm and Bose have been partners for years now, but it’s good to see the relationship continue to grow. I’m sure the products that Bose will release in the coming years, be it in the car, a home device, or personal headphones will provide continued improvement leveraging technologies like AI to eliminate ambient noise or enable ML to learn user habits and optimize the user experience.
Qualcomm Continues to Expand
Qualcomm is in the middle of an impressive portfolio expansion, diversifying beyond the smartphone business. This has helped drive multiple multi-billion-dollar lines of business for the company and is slowly helping the company shift its reputation from the leader in handsets to a far more diverse business with strong ties to IoT, Infrastructure, Automotive, and more.
With IFA announcements like the partnership with Meta, it’s clear that Qualcomm’s leadership is looking way into the future, setting the company up for promising business opportunities as new technologies like the metaverse become a reality. And while audio has been a key component of their business strategy for the past few years, it’s nice to see a continued effort to win key partnerships with leading OEMs like Bose. Qualcomm has long known how to become a preferred chipmaker in the handset space and is showing that it wants to be the chipmaker of choice for OEMs — wins like these represent good progress against those goals, and it will be important to see continued progress in these areas as the company deepens its roots in these emerging business units.
We covered these announcements and more from Cristiano Amon’s keynote on the latest episode of The Six Five webcast. Check out the episode here.
Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.
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Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
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An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
