The launch of 5G services in India will be a “catalytic event” in terms of scaling up the technology and enabling its proliferation in other developing economies across Latin America, Southeast Asia and Middle East, chipset major Qualcomm said on Tuesday. Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon said the launch of 5G technology in India will also help bring 5G devices across all different price points.
“When we look at the opportunities with 5G development in India, I see multiple and very important opportunities. They can all happen at the same time. The first one is India scale will bring in 5G technology into every single device at all different price points.
“In India scale may be a catalytic event to allow the proliferation of 5G, including in other developing economies such as Latin America, Southeast Asia, Middle East,” he said while speaking at a round table discussion.
With the advent of 5G, the US-based semiconductor major has been diversifying its business from a communications company focussed on mobile industry into a connected processor company to address the technology needs of other verticals such as automobile, personal computers and industrial technology.
Amon said that is a tremendous opportunity for India to play a role in the global semiconductor industry as electronic chips will become a critical ingredient of the future digital economy.
He said that many governments want to have a resilience in the global, diversified semiconductor supply chain but no country can alone build it as it requires multiple elements to build the entire ecosystem.
“This is not a problem that one country has. I think the best outcome is some of the partners such as the United States, Europe, India, working together and with the collection of incentives it is easier to find that you have now the mechanism to move an entire supply chain, and every country has a role to play.
“This is not about competition, about US versus Europe or Korea, India. This is about working together. Working together is important because you don’t want to have a lot of duplication,” Amon said.
The company has around 18,000 employees in India who are mostly working in its research and development centre.
India has started its USD 10 billion-incentive scheme to attract semiconductor manufacturers. The government has received proposals from five companies for setting up the electronic chip and display manufacturing plants.
Qualcomm does not manufacture chipset and gets them from facilities of wafer fabrication companies like Samsung, GlobalFoundries and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
“I think India has an important role to play. As India looks to find its role in leveraging its talent and human capital with knowledge of semiconductors, we are a great example that we do advance design here.
“Semiconductor manufacturers will be more than happy to bring our scales to those fabs. We see a very positive dialogue between Indian governments and other governments to think about how to participate in this new world of semiconductor supply chain,” Amon said.