Meng Zhu, Chairman of Qualcomm China: 5G enables all walks of life to enter a new stage of development

As a "veteran" of the industry in the field of mobile communications, in the past 20 years, Meng Zhu, chairman of Qualcomm China, has experienced the industry and social changes brought about by each generation of mobile communication technology from "1G" to "5G", and still laments the transformative innovative applications brought about by intergenerational change, and what makes him most proud is the development process of China's mobile communication industry from weak to strong.

A few days ago, in a dialogue with the annual meeting of respected enterprises, Meng Said said that the 20 years of the development of the mobile communication industry are the result of continuous cooperation between the entire ecosystem. "Basically every 10 years or so, communication technology will be updated and iterated, and the pattern of the industrial chain will be reshuffled." This is qualcomm's experience of growing up with Chinese partners, and it is also the process of Chinese companies from learning to catching up with global competitors. "Qualcomm's success in China comes from the success of its partners." ”

Join hands with a wider "circle of friends"

In recent years, China's large-scale deployment of 5G has been accelerating, and the data shows that as of November 2021, the number of 5G base stations in China has reached 1.396 million, the number of 5G terminal connections has reached 497 million, and the number of 5G application innovation cases has exceeded 10,000. 5G is becoming an important force in promoting the high-quality development of the digital economy. Compared with 4G, the social changes brought about by 5G are also more profound.

During the 2020 CIIE, Qualcomm reached a strategic cooperation with the intelligent robot company Shanghai Pombert Technology Co., Ltd. and the Shanghai Institute of Sport to develop training robots that can set different difficulties. "As you can see from this example, expertise in each industry is particularly important. Therefore, when we cooperate with different industries, we must find 'experts' in this industry. "I think that in the process of 5G empowering thousands of industries, the industry knowledge of manufacturers in vertical industries is very important." Qualcomm needs to work with professionals to make a variety of 5G industry applications possible. ”

At present, China has become the country with the largest 5G network and the largest number of users in the world. But the development of 5G is a process, and it does not end after the network is built. Over the past year, facing the future of 5G, Qualcomm has taken the lead in launching a modem and RF system that meets the 3GPP Release 16 standard at the global technology development level - Snapdragon X65 5G mobile platform, which can support 10Gbps 5G rates. After the birth of this product, it promoted the application of 5G on the Release16 standard.

In July 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, together with the Central Cyberspace Administration, the National Development and Reform Commission and other 9 departments, issued the "5G Application "Sail" Action Plan (2021-2023)", proposing the goals of "breaking through the key links of 5G applications", "empowering key areas of 5G applications" and "improving 5G application support capabilities".

In the past three years, Qualcomm has launched the "5G Pilot Program" to help Chinese partners accelerate product research and development and shorten the time to market. In order to support the product technology testing and overseas business expansion of Chinese partners, Qualcomm has established an experienced team of technology research and development and support engineers in China, and set up an electromagnetic interference detection laboratory.

According to the 5G millimeter wave test plan of the IMT-2020 (5G) Propulsion Group, the large uplink frame structure of millimeter wave will be promoted in 2021 to support differentiated application scenarios. In August, in order to cooperate with and support the 5G mmWave testing and deployment requirements developed by the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group to support the 200MHz carrier bandwidth, Qualcomm and ZTE demonstrated the important features required for China's 5G mmWave deployment, laying the foundation for technical verification for the commercial use of 5G mmWave.

Meng Said that although China has not yet released a spectrum plan for millimeter wave, the continuous maturity of 5G cutting-edge technologies such as millimeter wave will make the perfect combination between business scenarios and technology forms; it will make the boundless XR, 5G future factory, and 5G V2X Internet of Vehicles a reality, and the deep integration of the 5G industry will provide more innovative applications. "These achievements are the result of our joint efforts with our Chinese ecological partners to promote the development of millimeter waves in China and around the world. I believe that in the future, millimeter wave will be more used, for example, to optimize the consumer experience in XR or gaming scenarios. In addition, millimeter wave can also be applied to various industries, especially in application scenarios that require large capacity and large bandwidth. He said.

Today, Qualcomm supports innovative development and the construction of mobile ecosystems through close cooperation with local governments and industrial partners, and has set up joint innovation centers in Chongqing, Nanjing, Qingdao, Hangzhou, Nanchang and other places. Each local joint innovation center provides free testing equipment and services, and local start-ups can come to the joint innovation center, which provides entrepreneurial counseling, help with testing, verification, financing and other help. Through these methods, Qualcomm hopes to promote the innovative development of local markets, local urban start-ups and industries through its own technological influence and the pulling power of the industrial chain.

Taking Qualcomm, Wuxi Municipal Health Commission, Wuxi Emergency Center and Wuxi Mobile jointly launching the "5G + Smart First Aid" application as an example, the new ambulance can transmit data information such as patient vital signs to the Wuxi Health Commission data center through the 5G emergency special network. Therefore, when the patient arrives at the receiving hospital, the hospital has mastered the patient's information and can formulate an emergency plan in advance to strive for greater rescue opportunities for the patient.

Meng Said that driven by technological innovation, 5G-related applications are further developing in depth and breadth, and for Qualcomm, the core of achieving all this is still win-win cooperation. "Qualcomm's growth comes not only from our commitment to technology, but also from our commitment to collaboration and building a strong ecosystem." He said, "We have always cherished the trust and choice of partners and friends, and hope to establish more new cooperation in more new industries, make friends, make a big 'circle of friends', and work together to create a future of intelligent interconnection of all things." ”

Opening a "New Chapter" of Intelligent Connectivity

At the beginning of December, the Snapdragon brand was completely renewed. "Snapdragon" became an independent brand, and the naming system of the Snapdragon mobile platform became a one-digit number plus an intergenerational number, from the brand logo and product logo. The new Snapdragon 8 Gen1 mobile platform is the first product to adopt a new naming system. In the same period, Qualcomm also released the 3rd generation Snapdragon 8cx computing platform, and launched the 1st generation Of Snapdragon G3x game platform for the first time, as a professional platform to support the creation of top dedicated consumer game products.

Previously, Qualcomm outlined the company's "unified technology roadmap" at the 2021 Investor Conference — leveraging leadership in AI, cameras, graphics, processing, and connectivity to deliver end-side intelligent, high-performance, low-power systems and wireless components for nearly every type of edge-side terminal, from headsets to smart connected cars. Qualcomm expects the potential market size to expand to $700 billion in the future.

According to gartner data, the global automotive semiconductor market is expected to reach $65.1 billion in 2022, accounting for 12% of the global semiconductor market and becoming the fastest growing segment in the semiconductor segment. At the beginning of this year, Qualcomm released the fourth-generation Snapdragon automotive digital cockpit platform equipped with 5nm system-level chips, Snapdragon Ride autonomous driving platform and 5G vehicle networking, including the whole ecological platform machine products of the vehicle industry, marking that in addition to smart phones, Qualcomm is extending the success achieved in the field of smart phones to other industries.

Based on this, Qualcomm's strategy focuses on four key business areas: smartphones, RF front-ends, automotive, and the Internet of Things, and expands its business to multiple market segments at the edge of mobile and intelligent networking.

At present, Qualcomm has long become a close technical partner of many automakers. More than 200 million vehicles worldwide have adopted Qualcomm automotive solutions, and 20 of the 25 top automakers have chosen the Snapdragon Digital Cockpit Platform. Its automotive solutions cover four key areas – in-vehicle connectivity and cellular connectivity (C-V2X), digital cockpit, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving, and cloud-side terminal management. In the field of in-vehicle networking and C-V2X, Qualcomm automotive wireless solutions cover a wide range of product portfolios such as 4G, 5G, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, C-V2X and RF front-ends.

In China, at the end of 2020, Great Wall Motors became the first car company to officially announce the adoption of Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride platform, which will be applied to models produced in mass production in 2022. Chinese auto companies, including Hongqi and Changan Ford, have also reached cooperation with Qualcomm, and Qualcomm will have more and more partners in the automotive field in the future. Zeng Xuezhong, senior vice president and president of the mobile phone department of Xiaomi Group, which is developing electric vehicles, said, "Because of Qualcomm's blessing, the new journey of electric vehicles in the next 10 years has made a lot of progress." ”

From the mature smartphone business, enter new markets such as automobiles and the Internet of Things. Qualcomm and its Chinese partners hope that Qualcomm's "horizontal" empowered business model will help Chinese companies lower the barrier to entry in the early stages and continue to help them succeed in more markets in the future.

In addition to the automotive industry, in 2020, Qualcomm and more than 20 leading manufacturers jointly advocated and launched the "5G Internet of Things Innovation Plan" to promote win-win innovation in the Internet of Things industry from the three dimensions of terminal form, ecological cooperation and digital upgrading. In the same year, Qualcomm cooperated extensively with Chinese manufacturers to launch a diversified 5G IoT terminal based on Snapdragon X55, which promoted the commercial landing of the industry's first batch of 5G IoT applications.

The "2020-2021 China Internet of Things Development Annual Report" shows that the scale of China's Internet of Things industry exceeded 1.7 trillion yuan. 5G Internet of Things not only penetrates into the social life of every netizen, but also deeply integrates with manufacturing, home, Internet of Vehicles, medical and health and other fields, changing the production and operation mode of all walks of life and promoting the rise of more vertical industry markets.

According to IDC, the global IoT market will reach $1.1 trillion by 2025. For the Internet of Things market, huge development opportunities have just emerged. At present, Qualcomm provides IoT solutions for more than 10,000 customers around the world.

Perhaps we can expect that with the landing of new technologies and application models, it will bring new development opportunities to Qualcomm and its Chinese partners - more best practices from various industries will be born in China.

dialogue:

Shen Jianyuan: At the beginning of December, the launch of the new generation of Snapdragon 8 mobile platform will bring about changes in the field of smartphones and other hardware products in the coming period?

Meng Pu: The new generation of Snapdragon 8 mobile platform is the first flagship mobile platform product launched after the independence of the Snapdragon brand. In terms of brand, function, technological advancement, etc., Qualcomm hopes to launch this brand to extend its business from a single smart phone category to other product areas in the future intelligent interconnection development process. These include cars, various IoT terminals, always-on PCs, and XR products such as virtual reality and augmented reality. We also hope that with a unified product roadmap, the Snapdragon platform can play an important role in areas where mobile connectivity and mobile computing capabilities need to be continuously enhanced.

Another aspect of the change is the new partner. In the past two or three decades, Qualcomm's partners have included manufacturers of mobile terminals and manufacturers of modules. With the development of 5G and the application of intelligent networking in all walks of life, our ecological chain is also growing, and there are more and more partners. The release of the new platform will help Qualcomm find a position in the development of the industry in new areas and develop hand in hand with the entire ecological chain.

Shen Jianyuan: Now Chinese smartphone companies are also providing some customized applications or services through self-developed chips, as experts in the mobile communication industry, how do you view this change?

MengPu: Whether it is the general chip needed for the development of products, or innovative technologies, products or applications, it is to better meet the needs of target customers. Doing these well, on the one hand, has a very positive effect on the development of the industry, each manufacturer has contributed different kinds of technological innovation, improving the overall innovation ability of the industry; on the other hand, it is also very good for consumers, you can experience the products of different manufacturers, and there are more choices. Chinese mobile phone manufacturers not only develop very fast, but also have very large shipments in the global market, and they are relatively close to customers. You can see which manufacturer's product can make the relevant application experience to the extreme according to the applications that you use more and pay more attention to.

Shen Jianyuan: The recurrence of the global epidemic and the loss of chip supply have brought a lot of uncertainty. Considering that China accounts for a relatively large proportion of Qualcomm's global business, what challenges do you think this change poses to Qualcomm's China team?

Meng: Over the past year or so, Qualcomm's Chinese team and global industry have experienced some new challenges. While the pandemic has impacted, we've also seen a lot of opportunities, such as a significant increase in global demand for mobile connectivity. From the perspective of qualcomm China team, on the one hand, as a technology company, it always insists on innovation and promotes the development of the mobile industry. On the other hand, we should also strive to reduce the disadvantages caused by the epidemic and work with partners in the new ecosystem such as the automotive industry. These are also the things we need to focus on accomplishing in the challenge. In this process, whether it is the digital revolution or 5G empowerment, there will still be great limitations in relying only on manufacturers in the mobile communication industry to promote the development of 5G. Qualcomm hopes to expand the scope of cooperation and circle of friends, and work with different industries to achieve 5G's empowerment of thousands of industries.

Shen Jianyuan: Looking back 30 years ago, did you imagine that mobile communication technology could change the world in this way? How do you see the experiences and changes over the years in your career?

Meng: From 1G to today's 5G, I have the privilege of participating in the development of the mobile communications industry for more than 30 years. Earliest, the problems that communication technology needed to overcome were mainly the limitations of telephone lines. Because in the past, when there was no mobile communication, the telephone was installed in the home or office in a wired manner. What we call a phone call is not actually a call to someone, but to a place with a phone, such as a home and an office, and we can only talk to the other party when they happen to be in these places. Therefore, whether it is the first generation of analog technology (1G) or the second generation of digital communication (2G), it is characterized by cutting the telephone line and realizing the connection to people, which is a very big change.

The continuous development of 3G, 4G, and 5G is equivalent to cutting off the network cable on our computer, so that we can truly move freely, no matter where we are, we can exchange information with the outside world anytime, anywhere. This is the direction of mobile communication technology that we did not expect at the beginning, and this is also a more interesting point in the industry - mobile communication technology will have a relatively large technical iteration every decade, which we call a "generation" (generation" in ten years). Each technological upgrade develops some highly transformative and innovative applications. Therefore, whether as a consumer or an industry, you can get a lot of new experiences and new opportunities for development.

The development of China's mobile communications industry is so fast for all to see. When I first entered the industry, China's communications industry was still relatively weak. Whether it is 1G or 2G, China is developing with the development of foreign industries. However, since 3G, the development of China's mobile communication industry in the past two decades has become faster and faster, from the follow-up of the 3G era to the leadership of the current 5G era, China has become a global forerunner in this field, which has played a very important role in the development of the global industry. The process of "3G following, 4G running together, and 5G leading" in China's mobile communications industry was unthinkable 30 years ago, and it is also a very happy thing for industry participants to see.

Shen Jianyuan: In 2022, how will Qualcomm China better achieve breakthroughs under the strategy of Qualcomm's four major global business segments? How do you see these growths and breakthroughs?

Meng Pu: With the development of 5G, Qualcomm has also ushered in a good stage in the development of decades. Looking ahead to next year, we have a lot of very good opportunities for development. The first is 5G technology, whether it is the various applications under the Release 16 standard, or the development prospects of millimeter wave in the Chinese market, can play a better role in promoting the development of 5G, and we are also working with the industry to promote it, hoping to achieve it as soon as possible.

Second, we hope to achieve assistance through technology in different industries, and continue to strengthen cooperation with ecological partners to expand more symbiotic relationships with the mobile terminal industry. We also see positive momentum in many industries. For example, in the automotive industry, we have a lot of partners. At present, more than 25 automakers have adopted the Snapdragon digital cockpit platform, including traditional automakers and new car manufacturers. In the future, we hope to develop together with everyone in the fields of automotive and Internet of Things, and extend our technology assistance and industrial cooperation outside the smartphone industry.

Third, we want to enter new markets. Qualcomm and our Chinese partners in the terminal industry have such ambitions in the 3G era - the mobile communication industry is a global industry, we can not only be satisfied with domestic development, but must go out, into the overseas mainstream market, into the high-end market. This is the direction we have worked hard with China's terminal industry for more than a decade.

In 2010, there was only one Chinese company in the world's top ten mobile phone manufacturers, and now there are seven. Taking smartphones as an example, I think Chinese manufacturers have the ability to bring more excellent products to the global market. Therefore, whether in the automotive industry, or in the field of Internet of Things, in XR, PC and other applications, we hope to make the ecosystem bigger through industrial cooperation and help everyone have a better development in the global market.

Shen Jianyuan: When do you think the relevant applications of the metacosm will appear or mature?

Meng Pu: When it comes to the "metacosm", different people have different definitions, and different companies have different pursuits. From the direction of current promotion, no matter what stage of development it is, no matter how wide or narrow it is defined, the metacosm must be inseparable from the connection between physical space and digital space. When people enter virtual reality, they must have a terminal to bring them in.

For Qualcomm, we are a company focused on technology research and development and innovation, and have a deep accumulation in mobile connectivity and mobile computing, and believe that we can help develop terminals that enter the meta-universe. Therefore, Qualcomm CEO Ammon mentioned at the release of the new generation of Snapdragon 8 mobile platform that our technology and products can serve as the "key" for everyone to enter the meta-universe and promote the development of related industries.

Whether it is 3G, 4G, 5G communication, or intelligent terminals, there are higher requirements for mobile computing, and today's automotive industry also needs intelligent networking. Virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) or mixed reality (MR) products, which we call XR, have more than 50 VR and AR terminals on the Snapdragon platform released. As you can see, we have a good foundation and a leading position in the XR field. I believe that in the future, we can continue to promote the development of the XR industry and create the key to the metaverse for everyone.

Shen Jianyuan/Wen