After the CES exhibition, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacob flew to China. In addition to meeting with the group chairman Wang Xiaochu at the China Telecom CDMA industry chain conference, Jacob ’s important topics also included visiting Chinese mobile phone manufacturers and media. At 8 a.m. on January 15, 2013, Paul Jacobs appeared at the JW Marriott Hotel, and he couldn't hide his excitement. At the previous CES show in the United States, he was invited to be the first keynote speaker-this is the first time in history that a chairman of a mobile communication company will give a pre-show keynote. Many years ago, this role was held by Microsoft CEO . The outside world sees this as a signal: the IT industry has entered a new era of mobility. Even Microsoft itself has begun deploying the Windows operating system to ARM chips and Snapdragon processors. Another reason for his excitement comes from Qualcomm's own financial data. In FY2012, Qualcomm set new highs in almost all business areas, regardless of revenue, shipments and profitability in the mobile market. In FY2012, Qualcomm delivered 590 million MSM chips, a very large increase year-on-year. Revenue in fiscal year 2012 was 19.1 billion US dollars, and it is expected that Qualcomm's revenue in fiscal 2013 will grow to between 23 billion and 24 billion US dollars. Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs This last year's data also heralds the future prosperity of the mobile computing market, but also means more intense competition. More and more companies are beginning to challenge this once-dominant chip company in the mobile field, with new competitors at various levels. MediaTek, which is famous for its turn-key solution, Huawei Hisilicon, which is famous for its scale, and Samsung, which is market-driven, are all eating Qualcomm ’s cake. In the face of such an active market in China, how to control costs while enriching product functions is a challenge for Qualcomm. Potential opponent At this year's CES show, Samsung released an eight-core chip. For the "nuclear" war prevailing in the mobile phone industry in 2012, Paul Jacobs disagreed. He felt that the current trend of emphasizing the number of cores is actually a marketing war, not a technical battle. It should not continue too much. Long. Paul said that Samsung ’s situation is a special case, because the four new ARM cores among the eight cores they use are not well optimized for mobile terminals, so the power consumption is high, so they need smaller cores to help They manage the power consumption of the terminal. He even spoke such a paragraph sarcastically. In the high-tech industry, such strategies often appear. Sometimes, there is a problem with your product, and you can call this problem your characteristics in turn. "The combination of 'Big + Little' is such an example." Jacobs thinks. Samsung did not agree on this comment. "From the perspective of Qualcomm, the multi-core processor with Krait architecture can adjust the number of working cores at any time according to the needs of the work. Each core can work independently to complete different work tasks, thereby effectively reducing power consumption. We don't need this 'Big + Little' solution. "Paul Jacobs said. Since not pursuing the number of cores, Qualcomm needs to prove that "2 is greater than 4". In the multi-core competition situation, Qualcomm needs to prove that the dual-core processors it advocates are more powerful than the quad-core processors of some competitors. Jacob believes that emphasizing the number of cores is a market-driven thinking, that is to say, from the perspective of marketing, it is relatively easy. But fundamentally, this approach is sometimes misleading, because whether it is consumers, terminal manufacturers, or operators, they ultimately focus on the user experience of the terminal. For example, high-speed download, smooth image display, precise positioning, etc., and these can be achieved by the product at a very low power consumption level. The balance and contradiction between multi-core and high power consumption always exist. Although the structure of the mobile market is very different from the structure of the PC market, Intel is also a potential competitor of Qualcomm. Although it is currently in the mobile field, Intel's advantages are not obvious. Opponent MediaTek has enabled Qualcomm to introduce targeted strategies, such as the business model in the entry-level market, which is Qualcomm Reference Design (QRD). There are many overlaps between the clients of MediaTek and Qualcomm. In addition to "China Cool Alliance" (ZTE, Huawei, Coolpad, Lenovo), more and more domestic brands that were closely connected with MediaTek in the past are also valued by Qualcomm. Technology is also threatening Qualcomm as the No. 1 chip manufacturer in Asia. After all, the latter's cost control is difficult for US companies to match. MediaTek also quickly launched an offensive against Qualcomm. MediaTek recently questioned Qualcomm's patent licensing fee settlement method based on the price of the terminal rather than the price of the chip. This statement has also been recognized by many domestic mobile phone manufacturers. For example, the same two phones using the same chip from Qualcomm, one of which uses a larger screen or improves the pixels of the camera, the overall price has increased, so the licensing fee for Qualcomm has also increased accordingly. Debate on the authorization model Qualcomm said it will not change this charging model. In Jacob's eyes, this long-established authorization model has a proven reason, because Qualcomm believes that "through such a model, we can ensure that we always make a huge investment in research and development. In the past year, we invested 4 billion R & D in US dollars, our R & D has made a tremendous contribution to the development of the entire industry, and also enabled many companies that were not able to compete in this industry to gain the ability to compete. We have sent a lot of money to licensed companies Technology. We think this model is very good, because it is not only aimed at high-end boutique mobile phones, but also a large number of entry-level low-priced mobile phones, and the patent fees for entry-level mobile phones are correspondingly lower. " And just talked about mobile phones with larger screens and better pixels, for example, mobile phones with higher performance, such as faster download speeds, more multimedia applications, videos, and games. These are all Qualcomm has invested heavily in development field. The technology developed by Qualcomm has brought more opportunities for terminal manufacturers to achieve differentiation, enabling them to launch terminal products at different levels. So our current model is the fairest. Remote terminal At the end of last year, Qualcomm said it decided to invest 120 million US dollars in Sharp. Jacob's explanation was that he valued Sharp's IGZO technology. Qualcomm currently holds mirasol display technology and a display technology called Pixtronic, which can put or block light through a mechanism like shutter opening and closing. This technology is very power-efficient, and its brightness can even exceed LCD and OLED. Sharp has a new type of transistor technology called IGZO with very low power consumption. Combining IGZO technology with Pixtronic can produce displays with very good brightness and low power consumption. Investment in display technology does not mean that Qualcomm intends to enter the terminal field. Qualcomm has been thinking about the Fabless model for a long time (waferless plant), but every time it comes to a conclusion, it is necessary to continue to stick to this model. Because under this model, Qualcomm can focus all its attention on technological innovation and concentrate on integrating cutting-edge technology into products without having to consider the cost of building chip factories and the problem of capacity utilization. "Our chip manufacturer partners have more experience and advantages in this regard." He gave an example. One of the problems Intel now faces is the insufficient utilization rate of their chip factories. Qualcomm currently has partnerships with TSMC, Samsung and Lianhua Electronics. Jacob said that Qualcomm has determined that it will not produce its own brand of mobile phones. A long time ago, Qualcomm also had its own mobile phone business. From this experience, we learned a very important lesson: partners do not like you to compete directly with them. Because, "In this case, the partner will think that you will leave the best technology in your hands and leave it to your terminal equipment. We are still more optimistic about the horizontal model, and we will respect this cooperation model. To launch their own terminal equipment. "Jacob said. This model also guarantees that there are more than 500 commercial terminal devices based on Snapdragon processors, and there are still more than 400 models in the design. Only in this way, partners are willing to promote more terminal devices based on Qualcomm products. SHENZHEN CHONDEKUAI TECHNOLOGY CO.LTD , https://www.szsiheyi.com