HAWAII—Qualcomm execs today teased the chipset that's going into the Samsung Galaxy S11 and said 2020 will be the year 5G goes mainstream.
"Our Snapdragon 5G mobile platforms announced today will continue to show leadership in the industry and deliver on the promise of scaling 5G in 2020," Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon said at the opening of the company's annual Snapdragon Technology Summit here.
He's not wrong. Qualcomm currently has a total monopoly on 5G chipsets in US smartphones, largely through its dominance of the millimeter-wave technology that Verizon and AT&T use for 5G. While MediaTek, Samsung, and Huawei all have competing 5G chipsets globally, none of them yet support millimeter-wave.
"We're committed in 2020 to bring 5G across the whole roadmap of chipsets from Qualcomm," Amon said at an earlier roundtable. That includes the midrange 600 series, which will probably see 5G later in 2020.
Motorola, Oppo and Xiaomi immediately said they'd release Snapdragon 865-based phones soon, with Nokia pledging to support the Snapdragon 765.
Qualcomm's chipsets dominate the 4G Android world in the US, as well. While MediaTek has a strong position in TVs and smart speakers, it's much weaker in phones. Other competitors like Samsung, Huawei, and Unisoc largely stay out of our mobile chip market. That leaves the US smartphone world, by and large, as a duel between Qualcomm and Apple.
The new Snapdragon 865, 765, and 765G (for gaming) chipsets will give you 5G whether you want it or not. While Qualcomm's 855 chipset came by default as a 4G product and had an add-on, 5G option, the 765/G and 865 will pair only with 5G modems. They'll have 4G (and 3G, and 2G) fallback, and some OEMs will choose not to install millimeter-wave 5G antennas. But the capability will be on the chip.
"We expect Snapdragon 865 and 765/765G to power the most advanced Android-based smartphones in 2020—regardless of whether users are 5G or 4G coverage," Qualcomm said in a press release.
The 865 will include Qualcomm's X55 modem/antenna system, which just appeared for the first time in the OnePlus 7T Pro McLaren and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ for T-Mobile, as part of T-Mobile's nationwide 5G launch. The X55 is the first modem that can handle the full "layer cake" of 5G technologies used in the US—millimeter-wave, mid-band TDD, and low-band FDD—but the initial round of X55 phones, which use the Qualcomm 855 chipset, can only handle two of the three. I'm looking forward to hearing how the 865 will fix that.
The Snapdragon 765 will be a lower-cost 5G platform.
Various analysts predict that 2021 will be the year 5G really takes off. According to this CCS Insight analysis via Statista, 14 million 5G connections in the US in 2020 will become 80 million in 2021. Apple's iPhones are anticipated to get 5G in September 2020, which will really boost 2021 numbers.
Qualcomm's execs, of course, are even more bullish on the technology that will drive their success.
"The best 4G phone you can buy today is a 5G phone," Amon argued. People have been stalling on their purchases, and they're ready for new phones in 2020, he says. "When we did the 4G transition, handsets were only two years old. When we're doing 5G, they're three, four, five years old."
Other considerations will drive 5G adoption outside the US, he added. Europe, unlike the US, has new service plans for 5G with much bigger data caps. China, meanwhile, is very "spec centric," with Chinese consumers wanting the biggest and best numbers.
"Every new premium tier, high tier, and maybe by the second half (of 2020) mid tier phone will be 5G," Katouzian said.
In their brief intro, Qualcomm execs also teased announcements around AI. While Qualcomm has been backing away from custom processor cores over the past few years, relying instead on complex systems of ARM-standard cores, it's been pouring energy into its Hexagon DSP line for AI processing to enable features like fast biometric recognition and better low-light camera performance.
Qualcomm didn't give additional details about the 865 and 765—yet. It's teasing them for tomorrow. We'll have much more on the Snapdragon 865, 765, and other Qualcomm products then.