Qualcomm is helping address one of the auto industry's most pressing needs - scaling intelligent vehicle technology to meet growing consumer demand for vehicles that are automated, connected and highly personalised.
It hasn't gone unnoticed by the broader market that Shares of Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) fell sharply in early February, coinciding with a noticeable shift in retail investor sentiment on platforms like Reddit and X from cautiously optimistic to decidedly bearish. The chipmaker reported Q1 revenue of $12.3 billion, a record for the quarter, yet the stock has tumbled 18% year-to-date. The disconnect stems from weak forward guidance, driven by a global memory chip shortage that's constraining smartphone manufacturers and forcing them to scale back production plans.
In September, Qualcomm is rumored to be unveiling the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro, with the latter being the company's new top dog in the smartphone SoC space until 2027. Now a new rumor from China claims the Xiaomi 18 will use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, and not the Pro version of the SoC, since the Elite Gen 6 Pro is apparently going to be too expensive.
But he quickly turned pessimistic by warning "In the coming quarters, the handset industry will be constrained by the availability and pricing of memory, particularly DRAM." Those constraints, he said, stem entirely from memory-makers prioritizing memory for AI datacenters and reducing the amount of other memory they make. The laws of supply and demand have kicked in, sending the price of DRAM soaring.
Qualcomm's answer to Nvidia's dominance in the artificial acceleration market is a pair of new chips for server racks, the A1200 and A1250, based on its existing neural processing unit (NPU) technology. Significantly, Qualcomm has developed a novel memory architecture for the A1250 based on near-memory computing, which it claims provides "a generational leap in efficiency and performance for AI inference workloads". It does so, according to Qualcomm, by delivering greater than 10x higher effective memory bandwidth and much lower power consumption.
Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (SM8850-AC) flagship mobile platform at the Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii, alongside the Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme chips. And towards the end of the product keynote, the chipmaker introduced the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 SoC. While Qualcomm didn't detail the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 SoC, Alex Katouzian, General Manager for Mobile, Compute, and XR at Qualcomm, said, "We developed this chipset to give you more choices and flexibility, while still delivering flagship features."
Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset in April, and it's been used in seven smartphones so far as an upper-midrange option. A new rumor from China today claims Qualcomm will diversify its SoC range even more, as it's getting ready to offer a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 "Pro" or "Plus" version. While the source of the leak doesn't say it, we assume this means a higher bin of the chip, most likely with some overclocked cores.
Qualcomm is joining forces with BMW on a new driver-assist system that will allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel on approved roads. Qualcomm, which supplies infotainment, driver-assist, and telematics systems to a variety of automakers, is looking to raise its portfolio in the auto industry, as more car companies turn to advanced processors and chips to power high-tech features. The San Diego-based chipmaker says it currently has $45 billion in future revenue in its automotive pipeline right now.
