Looking beyond the chip frontier

Paul Jacobs, Qualcomm Inc's executive chairman. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Qualcomm to expand presence in the country with more path-breaking technologies, says its executive chairman

Business opportunities are what Qualcomm Inc's Executive Chairman Paul Jacobs sees in China when growth in the global smartphone market continues to slow.

The mobile chip maker is planning to bring more cutting edge technologies to the world's top consumer electronics market as Huawei, Xiaomi Corp and other local smartphone vendors take on Apple Inc and the government looks to the Internet of Things to boost a slowing economy.

"I feel that the relationships that we built (with the Chinese ecosystem) are stronger and some of the new projects that we have underway are exciting. I feel good about it," Jacobs said in Nanjing recently.

The US company is making a series of moves in China including the production of its popular Snapdragon 410 processor by China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation and has signed a memorandum of understanding with Guizhou government.

"We have had some difficulties in terms of the licensing business and the thing that I am most proud of is that - and it is a very Qualcomm thing - we took something that could have been a very negative situation, and instead of letting it beat us down, we looked at it and said, how can we come through this in a better way," Jacobs said.

Jacobs is attempting to create a bigger presence for Qualcomm in technologies that are as big as telephones.

The company set up a joint venture to develop the next-generation chipmaking techniques in Shanghai with local manufacturers and also pledged more investment to local startups.

Recently he spoke to China Daily about his vision and strategy and new opportunities for Qualcomm's China operations. The following are edited excerpts of the interview:

Five years down the road, what are you looking at in terms of technology changes?

I think there are a bunch of new opportunities for us. The opportunities created by the Internet of everything, the fact that we have driven the cost down and boosted the performance means that those technologies can now go out and be in all sorts of stuff around the world.

Our partnerships were very mobile industry focused, and now I think we have the opportunity across more industries and of course we have already started that.

In the next five years we will see that happening much more. I think we will have a little more diversity in the business because we are currently very concentrated on the phone market.

There will be an opportunity to do other stuff, such as in automobiles, smart cities, healthcare, education, and many other industries. There are lots of places to build technology that advances these industries and it is natural for us to do these kinds of things.