Qualcomm India Head on New 600-Series Mobile Platforms, Machine Learning, and More

Qualcomm on Tuesday at its Snapdragon Tech Day event in Singapore revealed its new Snapdragon 600-Series mobile platforms, alongside showcasing the company's first 10nm SoC - the Snapdragon 835. The company believes that the successors to the Snapdragon 625 and Snapdragon 653, the new Snapdragon 630 and Snapdragon 660, will do well in the mid-to-premium price segment in markets like India.

The new Snapdragon 630 and Snapdragon 660 mobile platforms have the Kryo CPU, X12 LTE modem, and machine learning algorithms that were not earlier available to the Snapdragon 600-Series mobile platforms.

At the event, Gadgets 360 spoke to Larry Paulson, Vice President and President, Qualcomm India, who explained where the new processors can fit in India. "For emerging markets, particularly India, we believe that there is a market for the new Snapdragon 835, but obviously in the emerging markets where an OEM wants to offer a top-of-the-line smartphone in the range of Rs. 20-25,000 or even lower at Rs. 15-20,000, it's really hard to do that with the Snapdragon 835 processor," said Paulson. "This is the place where the latest Snapdragon 630 and Snapdragon 660 fit very well in the price range."

Qualcomm has added support for machine learning in the latest Snapdragon 600-Series mobile platforms but it needs to be implemented by the various OEMs. We asked Paulson how soon the machine learning features can be expected to trickle down to lower price points, when it comes to devices. "In some parts of the world like in the US, Alexa, Amazon's digital voice assistant, comes integrated in a range of products, and then you have Google Home," said Paulson. "We feel that the artificial intelligence is catching a very strong wave and our role is to enable technology for the OEMs. We don't know when the Indian market will see Amazon's Alexa or Google Home products being sold extensively, but by enabling the technology like machine learning we are creating possibilities. When it happens, it will happen fast."

With the Snapdragon 600-Series mobile platforms taking the main stage, we quizzed Paulson whether the company's Snapdragon 200-Series is getting traction from the market.

"In March, we announced a new Snapdragon 200-Series processor, the Snapdragon 205, which was crafted with India in the lead with other markets that can use the chipset," he replied. "The traction in the Snapdragon 200-Series has been high and the chipset seems to hit right notes as it relates to 4G feature phone market."

"The fact that we lead with the flagship series is because it's developed at the highest end of the mobile industry," Paulson added. "One of the objectives is to build the best product that we possibly can but the second objective of that is to allow the cascading down. Features that you today see in the Snapdragon 800-Series may be available to the Snapdragon 400-Series in two or three years."

Paulson also said that the company has a strong engineering presence in India. He asserted that the company's role is vital in accelerating "Make in India" vision of the industry.

"We have a strong engineering presence in India for supporting local OEMs and the industry," said Paulson. The company provides OEM will design training, reference design, lab services, localisation and customisation, enabling development of upstream industries, he pointed out.

Disclosure: Qualcomm sponsored the correspondent's flight and hotel for the trip to Singapore.