The American Qualcomm owes much of its current fortunes to its leading position which covers in the smartphone market. The chips from the San Diego manufacturer are currently running on about 30% of Android phones and tablets. However, if the mobile device market represents the (lucky) present for Qualcomm, the company has been working for years to prepare for the future, investing in particular in two directions that it considers promising. On the one hand there is the strong interest in the development of the metaverse, confirmed by the announcement – which took place at the Ifa – of a four-year strategic partnership with Meta. On the other hand, there is the automotive sector, with initiatives that will allow car manufacturers to accelerate their digital transformation strategies. In Berlin we met Nakul Duggal, Qualcomm’s senior vice president and general manager of Automotivejust to talk about this second aspect.
The project that is the cornerstone of the company’s entire automotive strategy is Snapdragon Digital Chassis, a digital platform that wants to transform the concept of the vehicle, bringing development and business models typical of the digital market to a sector, that of the automobile, slowed down by obsolete paradigms. “With the Snapdragon Digital Chassis we have created a technology that allows car manufacturers to quickly modernize their offer – Duggal explained to Italian Tech – The aim is to create a platform that provides car manufacturers 70-80% of the digital structure they need, they leave them the freedom to finalize the product based on the experience they want to offer their customers. A mature platform, which allows manufacturers to arrive faster at the development of new offers and business models in step with digital change “.
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How difficult is it to convince car manufacturers, especially the big historical giants, that car digitization is an opportunity to be embraced and not a risk?
“The first thing to understand is that in this sector every company is profoundly different from every other. How many resources have they already employed in digital transformation processes? Do they already have a plan? newer manufacturers, those who started immediately from the production of electric cars, have an advantage: they are already companies based on the sale of hardware and software and have a deeply “tech” mentality: they know what they want, and they go straight to the point. There are also historic companies that have already begun a deep digital transition and know what they want and need to do: they are optimal customers, because they want a long-term partner to support this path. Finally, there are other companies with enormous internal complexities, deriving from the evolution of the brand or from acquisitions and mergers. In this case, with these customers, our role is to help them understand how to face the path that they will inevitably have to take, and how to rethink their role and their relationships with suppliers accordingly “.
But aren’t they worried that Qualcomm wants to turn the auto market into a new smartphone market?
“There isn’t much choice: today you either digitize and modernize or you die. The question at that point is who you want from yours, and we obviously think Qualcomm is the right choice. One comparison with the smartphone market it is also difficult to do: the car market is a much more ramified and complex market, involving a much more complex and structured supply chain. Furthermore, we are not interested in taking away the relationship with the customer from the automakers. On the contrary, we want to avoid what happens in the smartphone market, where software companies that offer operating systems control access to digital services on manufacturers’ hardware. We we want to help car manufacturers to develop their own user experiences, which also pass through the software, and prevent the car from becoming simply an extension of the telephone “.
However, on many models the gap in terms of usability, interface quality and intuitiveness between solutions such as Apple CarPlay or Android Auto compared to proprietary solutions remains enormous …
“Many high-level manufacturers already choose not to offer these solutions and believe in their proprietary interfaces and yet they have created systems that people appreciate. The point, however, remains valid: if the user base is very large, it is really difficult not to offer. solutions based on smartphones. However, the car as a digital entity is not limited to infotainment listen to your music or use Google Maps for navigation, of course, there is no competition. However, if you want to know what they are and how to activate the safety features of the car, which is the nearest charging station based on the remaining range and so on, here are all services that the car can offer through the integrated system. , and not through the system enabled by the phone. There is no need to eliminate the smartphone: manufacturers know that it is an integral part of everyone’s digital lives. However, they can focus on all the services that are closed to the mobile device, which does not have access to the huge amount of data on usage habits that a car can register. The consequences of this epochal change will affect all the related industries “.
Can you give us a practical example?
“Think of the global car insurance market. It deals with a myriad of sensitive data about who drives: age, number of people, car model, driver experience, the type of use made of the vehicle and so on. This amount of data is all within the direct reach of car manufacturers, who have a fundamental advantage on their side: they are used to safety and regulations, so they can collect and store them better than anyone else. A digital car therefore enables the possibility for the manufacturer to offer the integrated insurance service, for example, precisely because it has the advantage of having access without intermediaries to the entire amount of data that serve to make it efficient and profitable. The digital car connected to the cloud immediately creates a new source of profit for manufacturers that was not possible until now. The problem for big producers is learning how to really do all this, because they are not Google or Meta, data has never been part of their business model. “
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So will the relationship with the concept of car ownership also change, in a way in which the car will increasingly become a platform for new digital services?
“Yes. The life of a vehicle, with the switch to electric, will be longer. Each vehicle will need to have a software profile that can be customized and updated. Newer generations will have no problem accepting this model, because it is already part of their lives. For manufacturers the advantage will also be to offer cars whose functions are customized at the software level, thus offering a greater level of customization around the customer’s needs. As for the concept of ownership, it depends on many factors. In the meantime, the use made of the vehicle, if it is only to move around the city, or if it is a work or commercial vehicle. Then also from the geographic region of belonging: the needs of consumers are very different depending on the market. The decline of the concept of car ownership, however, should not scare manufacturers. On the contrary, it represents an enormous possibility and potential to develop new business models, different from the monolithic sales and after-sales one that has dominated the market for 30 or 40 years. If, with our help, manufacturers are able to create their own platforms for enabling new digital services, they will be able to continue to extract value throughout the life cycle of the car “.