‘India is almost the heart of our engineering team’: Qualcomm SVP on how the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 chip could increase the accessibility of sub-$100 5G smartphones

Although the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 chip is designed in India, Patrick made it clear that it is a global mobile processor. “India actually has a more modern 5G network in many ways than some other regions in the world. With that, we’re able to optimise and customise this technology. So, starting first in India, it will then be rolled out globally,” he said.

Qualcomm Inc., the world’s largest seller of smartphone processors, is refocusing on the lower end of the phone market with the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2, especially in emerging markets like India and Latin America, in the hope of increasing the penetration of smartphones in the sub-$100 segment.

Current digital snapshot of India. (Image: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

The company is using 5G, or the fifth generation of wireless technology, as an important feature to drive smartphone sales, hoping that consumers will upgrade to better devices with faster connectivity, longer battery life, and improved cameras over feature phones. China’s Xiaomi Corp. will be the first OEM to launch a smartphone with the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 towards the end of the year.

For San Diego-based Qualcomm, India isn’t just a large market for smartphones but also hosts the company’s second-largest engineering team outside its headquarters, with a headcount of 15,000, making the country unique. The India engineering team develops IP and chipsets across premium, mid-tier, and entry-level smartphone segments.

“A lot of times we think of low-tier as low complexity, but that’s not always true. Even though we scale down many of the IPs to fit the low-tier segment, there are still significant challenges related to CPU performance, power consumption, and cost sensitivity. There is a lot of complexity involved in achieving scalability and cost-efficiency. I think there are quite a few challenges in this process, and the team in India is really able to tackle them,” Shashi Reddy, SVP and head of the Hyderabad Development Center at Qualcomm, commented.

Savi Soin, senior vice president and president, Qualcomm India. (Image: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

The Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 includes an octa-core Kryo CPU, which comprises two performance cores that support up to a 2GHz clock speed and six efficiency cores at up to 1.8GHz. The chip lacks support for 5G networks in the non-standalone deployment mode, which is currently widespread and allows operators to offer high-speed connectivity using their existing network. Instead, it supports connectivity through standalone 5G deployment. In India, Jio is the only telecom operator offering 5G networks in standalone mode. However, Airtel, the second-largest telecom operator in the country, will launch a version in the near future.

In India, the world’s second-largest smartphone market, phone vendors have struggled to attract feature phone users to upgrade to smartphones in the sub-$100 segment. India has more than 350 million users of feature phones, or “dumbphones” as they are commonly known. There is potential for entry-level smartphones to succeed if they offer value to consumers at the right price with attractive schemes and options.

“If somebody is earning Rs 8,000 a month, the only way to buy a smartphone is through some form of payment plan, and that might work to lower the cost of smartphones,” Savi Soin, senior vice president and president of Qualcomm India, responded when asked if a hardware-based subscription plan could help increase the uptake of smartphones in the low-tier segment.