Qualcomm today articulated a strategy to push its chipset platform into IoT, networking, edge computing, and automotive — positioning itself for a sevenfold addressable market jump during the next decade. The silicon giant said it expects that total opportunity to grow from about $100 billion today to $700 billion in the next 10 years.
“We’re having a seven-times expansion of the addressable market and we’ve never had so many end-market opportunities for Qualcomm as we see today,” CEO Cristiano Amon said during the company’s investor event.
“We’re uniquely positioned to grow across multiple industries, multiple end markets,” he added.
Much of this opening rides on what Amon described as a widespread effort to architect a modern network for industries that haven’t fully embraced the digital era, the cloud, and next-generation connectivity. “While it looks like a lot, we’re incredibly focused because it leverages our one technology roadmap,” he explained.
Qualcomm Asserts Sevenfold Growth Opening By 2031“The transformation of industry is really tying Qualcomm to the cloud,” and this presents Qualcomm with the potential for significant revenue growth in automotive, networking, and IoT for consumers and industries, Amon said.
Qualcomm is “clearly very well positioned to lead this transition” as its 5G modems will likely dominate automotive and IoT connections with its radio frequency front-end components, analysts at Rosenblatt Securities wrote in a research note following the event.
Qualcomm set multiple long-range targets today, including an increase of IoT revenue from $5.1 billion in fiscal year 2021 to $9 billion in fiscal year 2024, and said it expects automotive revenue to grow from about $1 billion in fiscal year 2021 to about $3.5 billion in five years and $8 billion in 10 years. The company has thus far inked deals with 25 auto manufacturers.
The IoT segment covers a wide swath for Qualcomm, including consumer and industrial applications, and advancements in wireless networking architecture — all of which the company claims to represent similar market sizes and growth rates.
RAN Opportunity Spans FWA, vRAN, open RAN, WiFiQualcomm didn’t reveal any new details about its late 2020 vow to break into the 5G radio access network (RAN) chipset market, but comments indicate that those plans are on track. This opportunity spans fixed-wireless access, virtualized RAN (vRAN), open RAN, and WiFi.
“For the first time in wireless we now have a technology that can truly compete with fiber,” Amon said, adding that 3G and 4G LTE technologies are not ideal technologies for home broadband. “5G is now the fastest growing, last mile broadband technology and it’s really gaining scale,” he said.
Pointing to a current footprint of 68 5G fixed-wireless access providers across 32 countries, Amon said Qualcomm predicts at least 25% of global mobile data traffic will be provided by 5G within five years.
“Virtually everyone that is building on this opportunity is designing with Qualcomm. That’s an incredible opportunity for growth,” he said. Qualcomm claims more than 30 deals for residential WiFi designs, and more than 300 customers for enterprise-grade WiFi access point platforms.
“You have the opportunity to create the modern network, connecting the access point directly to the cloud. And you see a very vibrant technology roadmap with WiFi 6E and WiFi 7 with carrier upside expansion as the WiFi access point becomes connected to 5G wireless fiber,” Amon said.
Finally, Amon lightly touched on Qualcomm’s aspirations in the RAN market. The company is targeting millimeter-wave and sub-6 GHz spectrum infrastructure and previously revealed 5G open RAN small cells and a 5G distributed unit (DU) accelerator card.
It also plans to release a portfolio of silicon, system-on-a-chip (SoC) based products, and reference architecture expected to ship in the first half of 2022. Qualcomm also previously said it would publish a technical blueprint by the end of this year for vendors to build 5G vRAN and open RAN equipment with its silicon.
Fundamental Cellular Infrastructure Changes Amid RAN Virtualization“We don't talk much about this because we have a lot of things that we're talking about. But cellular infrastructure is changing, it’s changing fundamentally because the RAN is getting virtualized,” Amon said. Qualcomm is targeting that transition by building “the world’s best solution for the future of vRAN,” he claimed.
“Not only do we have solutions for the small cells, but we have solutions for the large capacity radio units. And we have an inline accelerator card that plugs directly into a data center. The feedback we have been receiving from the market compared to every single alternative they have is 50% lower total cost of ownership and 50% more energy efficiency,” Amon said.
Multiple global operators have applauded Qualcomm’s return to the RAN market and its push into vRAN and open RAN, including Deutsche Telekom, NTT DoCoMo, and Vodafone.
Amon also highlighted a deal Qualcomm struck earlier this month with NEC that calls for the use of Qualcomm’s platform for the radio unit and the digital unit for vRAN and open RAN. Under that agreement, the DU will be powered by the Qualcomm X100 RAN Accelerator Card and developed under the 5G Open RAN Ecosystem, an initiative formed earlier this year and led by NTT DoCoMo to foster the advancement of open RAN architecture.
NEC, like Qualcomm, views 5G and the advancement of vRAN and open RAN as an opportunity to capture a greater share of the RAN market if adoption picks up in the coming years.