VR, AR, AI, drone... An octopus-like high pass

The "Intel Inside" ads are deeply rooted in people's minds, whether they are designing packages or soundtracks that can be remembered at any time.

Although Qualcomm, the largest technology company in San Diego, has achieved remarkable results, Intel is still a long way from brand recognition and revenue. The company's ambition has long been more than just mobile phone chips: cars, high-end fitness wristbands, VR heads, smart watches, AI, drones, and even satellites. Qualcomm even wants to break into Intel's veteran PCs and servers.

Sean Captain, the journalist of Fast Company, interviewed Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf. The following is the first-person compilation.

You may think that the leader of this company must be an aggressive CEO, but the one I saw in the conference room of Qualcomm headquarters was not aggressive. The 47-year-old middle-aged man worked in Qualcomm for 22 years and in March 2014 he formally took over as CEO.

Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf

At that time, Qualcomm was in the depths of the water, and it was their own flagship product, the Xiaolong 810. Their major shareholder, Jana Partners, is pressing harder and harder and proposes to split Qualcomm into two parts: a part of the design chip and a part of the patent protection. Not only did the internal turmoil begin, but the war broke out. Taiwan MediaTek took the opportunity to challenge the giant hair.

“I think the management team was faced with the greatest difficulty in history at that time. So we finally decided to make the biggest structural adjustment in the history of the company. We repositioned the company and completely changed the way Qualcomm connects with the world.” Mollenkopf said calmly face to face.

The so-called "connection to the world" is essentially a processor that provides powerful performance for new equipment of 10 billion to 100 billion. They want to flex their muscles in the field of competitors, which requires a comprehensive adjustment of the company.

However, Qualcomm did not split, but they continued to expand. After Mollenkopf took office, Qualcomm spent more than US$50 billion on acquisitions, including the upcoming $47 billion worth of transactions with German chip manufacturer NXP. Once an agreement is reached, Qualcomm’s staff will double, and they will also It will successfully extend its reach into areas such as automotive, medical care, home automation, wireless payment, and more.

However, their body mass is not expanding indefinitely, and Mollenkopf has also made some "thinning down" because these businesses have no obvious connection with the manufacturing of core business chips. For example, in 2015 they sold the AR software platform Vuforia. These “thin weights” reduced the company’s annual expenses by US$1.4 billion and 1,700 jobs.

In the world outside of Apple, Qualcomm is undoubtedly the master of high-end smartphones. But two-thirds of their profits come from the licensing of communications patents, including the 2G and 3G wireless standards CDMA used by Verizon and Sprint, the two largest US carriers, and the 4G standard used by most mobile phones in the world. Qualcomm hopes to A few years later, the 5G standard will not be dropped.

Qualcomm and Intel's difference lies in manufacturing and manufacturing. Just like Apple, they are only responsible for designing their own chips. As for volume production and technology, it is something that Samsung and other foundry manufacturers should care about. Keith Kressin, senior vice president of product management at Qualcomm, said: "We don't care about how busy Samsung's factories are and they should worry about this." For four consecutive years, Qualcomm's processor manufacturing processes have been declining. This year's flagship Xiaolong 835 is compared to last year. The 820 and 821 are smaller by 35% and energy consumption is lower by 25%. (Quotcom will also have its own factory after the NXP acquisition is completed.)

Exclusive ownership does not guarantee future. Intel dominated the PC, Mac and server markets. However, for many years it was impossible to stand on smart phones. Forrester analyst Frank Gillett, a researcher, said with a hint of ridicule: “Intel’s sin is that they do not listen to Apple’s request. They are against Apple. Say, 'Oh, we have these things. You choose it.'' Then they were replaced by the British's ARM.

The size of the smart phone market is still growing, especially in developing countries. Gartner, a market research firm, said that compared to the once-a-year, double-digit percentage increase, the annual percentage growth has slowed down a lot. Qualcomm, like many other chip vendors, has shifted its hope of growth to other connected devices—something we call “Internet of Things”.

Mollenkopf believes that Qualcomm's chips are perfectly suited to the new smart devices, and Intel has not shown weakness. Qualcomm has actually fallen behind in many new areas. In AI and automobiles, Nvidia is their new rival.

In San Diego, I visited one of their labs, which was stuffed with prototypes of consumer drones. Some engineers are debugging image stabilization algorithms for drone cameras. These drones use their 2014 Snapdragon 801.

Qualcomm drone prototype products

Chinese company Zero Zero Robotics' $599 self-timer drone Hover Camera Passport is one of Qualcomm's customers. Self-driving drones are an emerging area: this lightweight machine can automatically recognize faces and even keep track of people as they move. However, only a few are using Qualcomm chips. Dajiang’s Phantom 4, Mavic Pro's core chip is from a startup called Movidius, which has been acquired by Intel.

In spite of this, Qualcomm has made some progress: Tencent, Zerotech, Pegatron, Nine Eagles, and Sunly are all ready to use Qualcomm's chip + software platform - Xiaolong Flight. "There is no absolute ruler in the drone chip market and it is still a fragmented state," said Mark Hung, an analyst at Gartner.

The prototypes exhibited by Qualcomm are VR heads. Last year, they integrated Xiaolong 820 to make a VR head-display machine VR820. This year's CES also updated the version of Xiaolong 835. The camera in front of this machine is the same as the one on the unmanned prototype: After wearing the head display, it can recognize the surrounding obstacles and measure the distance the user moves. Their VR headset also recognizes the user's hand movements and substitutes them into the VR environment. This tracking, called "Inside-out", does not require several external trackers like Vive and Rift.

The VR head display prototype equipped with Snapdragon 835

Like drones, Qualcomm hopes that manufacturers will introduce modified versions of their products directly on their prototype products. China’s Coolo, Focalmax, Birdwatch, and Micromirrors will use VR820.

On this road, Intel’s Project Alloy has once again become their opponent, both with Inside-out tracking, but Intel’s machine developers have to wait until the fourth quarter.

AR, which is a younger market than VR, also has Qualcomm's presence. ODG's R-8 and R-9 AR glasses have become the first devices equipped with Xiaolong 835.

In more mature markets, Qualcomm hopes to play its own performance advantage. Fitbit, one of the leaders of wearable devices, uses low-end chips from STMicroelectronics. However, Qualcomm, as a Fitbit investor, wants Fitbit to make some changes. “The companies we invest in are seen by us as future partners or customers because they are not using our products,” said Patrick Eggen, head of Qualcomm Capital.

Wearable sports record products are becoming more and more like smart watches, and Qualcomm is aiming for this trend. "The beginning of these things was to record the number of steps, and then people's needs began to increase," said Raj Talluri, head of Qualcomm's Internet of Things department.

When Qualcomm was born in 2007, Qualcomm was still unknown in the mobile phone processor industry. "I remember that in the first few years of this century people would say, 'Your modem is doing a good job, but you will never have a foothold in the smartphone market because smartphones need CPUs and GPUs'," said Mollenkopf. "But now we are number one."

Being brave enough also means taking risks. "Mirasol" is an example. This unexplained technology wants to create display technology that combines both LCD color quality and E Ink energy efficiency, but no one remembers it now.

Qualcomm did not give up on Mirasol. The smart watch called "Toq" launched in 2013 used this technology. Of course, no one remembers Toq. For Mirasol, Qualcomm opened its only factory in Taiwan, but in 2014 it was sold by them. (While Bloomberg reported in December 2015, Apple conducted mysterious display technology research at the factory.)

In the interview, Qualcomm’s senior executives did not seem to shy away from talking about their mistakes. Their low-key leadership did not mean that the company was weak. The group led by Mollenkopf was full of low-profile confidence. He said: “We Being able to change yourself when changes are needed can prove this in the past.”

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