From car to virtual reality
In the coming years, therefore, with the enormous diffusion of connected products, enormous demand will be created and Qualcomm has therefore decided to take advantage of this by multiplying its offer by segmenting it into a series of “specialized” versions to cover six “key” sectors. In addition to the Snapdragon 8 for smartphones, which have reached the Gen 2 version and which remain the workhorse and the area in which the greatest research and development efforts are concentrated, we have versions of the platform for cars, notebook and desktop computers, for augmented and virtual reality headsets, for wearable devices, for wireless audio devices and finally for mobile gaming.
As far as the car platform is concerned, the American company can already count on agreements with various car manufacturers, including Volvo and BMW, and each car manufacturer can choose whether to take the complete platform, capable of handling all part of infotainment and also the part of assisted autonomous driving, or whether to use it only for some specific functions.
The prospects are good because many manufacturers do not yet have an advanced IT platform and exploiting Qualcomm’s would allow them to cut the development of electric and autonomous vehicles by several years.
Furthermore, referring to a ready-made platform reduces the risk of finding yourself in a shortage of components as happened in the past (and still happens in part) because the procurement of an already consolidated chain is simpler than that of a production chain made tailored.
For the moment, the automotive platform is the second in importance (behind the smartphone one), but it is already developed enough to justify a dedicated development team, in addition to the basic one.