Qualcomm Inc by next year will have just the chip for laptop makers wondering how they can compete with Apple Inc, Qualcomm chief executive officer Cristiano Amon said on Thursday.
Apple last year introduced laptops using a custom-designed central processor chip that boasts longer battery life. Processor suppliers Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices have no chips as energy efficient as Apple’s.
Amon said that he believes his company can have the best chip on the market, with help from a team of architects who formerly worked on the Apple chip, but now work at Qualcomm.
Photo: Reuters
In his first interview since taking the top job at San Diego, California-based Qualcomm, Amon said that the company is counting on revenue growth from China to power its core smartphone chip business, despite political tensions.
“We will go big in China,” he said, adding that US sanctions on Huawei Technologies Co (華為) give Qualcomm an opportunity to generate a lot more revenue.
A cornerstone of his strategy comes from a lesson learned in the smartphone chip market, he said.
It was not enough just to provide modem chips for wireless data connectivity in phones, Qualcomm also needed to provide the brains to turn the phone into a computer, which it now does for most premium Android devices, he said.
Now, as Qualcomm looks to push 5G connectivity into laptops, it is pairing modems with a powerful central processing unit (CPU), Amon said.
Instead of using computing core blueprints from longtime partner Arm Ltd, as it now does for smartphones, Qualcomm said that it needed custom-designed chips if its customers were to rival new laptops from Apple.
As head of Qualcomm’s chip division, Amon this year led the US$1.4 billion acquisition of start-up Nuvia, whose ex-Apple founders help design some those Apple laptop chips before leaving to form the start-up.
Qualcom is to start selling Nuvia-based laptop chips next year.
“We needed to have the leading performance for a battery-powered device,” Amon said. “If Arm, which we’ve had a relationship with for years, eventually develops a CPU that’s better than what we can build ourselves, then we always have the option to license from Arm.”
Phone chips accounted for US$12.8 billion of Qualcomm’s US$16.5 billion in chip revenue in its most recent fiscal year.
Some of Qualcomm’s best customers, such as phone maker Xiaomi Corp (小米), are in China.
Qualcomm is counting on revenue growth as its Android handset customers swoop in on former users of phones from Huawei, which was forced out of the handset market by US sanctions.
TIRIAS Research principal analyst Kevin Krewell called the plan a “political minefield” due to rising US-China tensions.
However, Amon said the company could do business as usual there.
“We license our technology — we don’t have to do forced joint ventures with technology transfers. Our customers in China are current with their agreements, so you see respect for American intellectual property,” he said.
Another major challenge for Amon will be hanging on to Apple as a customer.
Qualcomm’s modem chips are now in all Apple iPhone 12 models after a bruising legal battle.
Apple in 2017 sued Qualcomm, but dropped its claims and signed chip supply and patent license agreements with Qualcomm in 2019.
Apple is now designing chips to displace Qualcomm’s communications chips in iPhones.
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