At Qualcomm’s annual conference this autumn, the chip giant took an untypical approach. Two years ago, its keynote was in an imposing theatre, unveiling all the new processors that will power some of the world’s most popular smartphones. This year’s event was in a smaller hall, with the company’s CEO Cristiano Amon almost within touching distance of the crowd.
This more intimate presentation chimed with the development of generative AI, which continues to dominate, and which now, we’re told, will have a more personal and personalised effect on our lives.
After revealing the company’s latest innovations and strategies during the keynote, Amon spoke exclusively with The Independent. The CEO is a gifted communicator: relaxed but laser-focused, as comfortable with the bird’s-eye view as the intricate detail. Generative AI continues to be crucial for the company, and seems to permeate Qualcomm’s innovations like its Snapdragon processors.
Amon describes how devices, like a smartphone with a Snapdragon chip, are changing: “It speaks our language, understands our intent. And I think that's how we're going to see the evolution of computing. One of the things I want to talk about is how once you have the computing engine that enables artificial intelligence to run, you redefine operating systems and apps into a very personalised experience.”
Which means we may need to think of apps differently. Instead of opening a shopping app, then opening a banking app to check your balance, for instance, if an app has AI built-in, simply speaking or typing to the phone will open the right app and handle everything automatically. “I think every app as defined today is going to get an AI front end. It's going to be a completely different experience,” Amon says.
“You may be on Amazon, buying something, and then you just say, ‘I want to pay with my debit card but do I have enough money in my account?’ The phone can access your balance and can even pay the bill for you. Or maybe you receive a bill in the post. You can take a photo, and the phone will pay the bill. That's a different way of interacting with a computing device that's going to redefine what we expect from our phones.”
In the future, Amon says, you’ll say to your phone that you need to be somewhere and the phone will sort it. “Maybe it goes to the Uber app on your phone, maybe it goes straight to Uber in the cloud. Once you interact with the AI model, what that particular app can do is endless. It's not no longer defined by the functionality that somebody programs into the app. That's how we're thinking about processors. How do you create a processor that makes that a reality? Our job is making the impossible inevitable. We have to create those processing engines that will run all of those things and make them a reality.”
This is interesting not just because it’s futuristic but how it seems designed to make phones more intuitive to use, which may help those who aren’t tech-savvy and don’t always know what their phones are capable of. “The beauty of what the phones will be able to do, or the PC, is it will democratise AI,” Amon says.
And another theme has run through Qualcomm’s messaging, with video messages from the likes of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Sam Altman from Open AI: where generative AI has routinely required a connection to the internet, Qualcomm is working on chips that will deliver AI “on the edge,” that is, on-device, so the AI will work even if you have no connection to the cloud. For that you need the right chip and Qualcomm thinks it has it.
“In five years, we’re all going to have an AI smartphone, maybe sooner,” Amon says. “We need to make sure that we can create processors that allow all that complex parallel computing to run all the time, analysing every word that you say, everything you type. We need to make that thing run on semiconductors, and do it in a way that as you're doing this incredible amount of computing, your phone's still small, still fits in your pocket, doesn’t get hot and lasts a whole day. That’s our job number one. That's what we’re doing right now, creating the engine that makes this future possible.”
Qualcomm now also puts its processors in computers and even in cars, but the smartphone is still central to the brand, for now at least. Amon explains, “The smartphone is mankind’s inseparable device right now. It is a big part of how we’ve been running our digital life. That’s going to change but that’s what we have right now. Consumers in general are interested about the technology that they carry with them all the time. There’s a lot more interest in the technology, and the level of awareness of Snapdragon is very high. That was the one of the reasons we decided that we needed to be really focused on the brand because consumers really care about what was behind the glass. And I think our partners see an incredible value in being part of that story. Snapdragon’s association with Dell, Lenovo, HP and Microsoft establishes Qualcomm in the PC space. I think there’s been an evolution of the relationship associated with what Snapdragon really means from an innovation standpoint.”
There was another partner at the Snapdragon event: Samsung’s CEO TM Roh flew into the keynote in person – Amon says it’s the first time he’s appeared at an event that wasn’t one of Samsung’s own. This seems to endorse the importance of Qualcomm to Samsung, confirmed in the last couple of years when Samsung switched from its own processors to bespoke versions of Snapdragon chips for its top-flight Galaxy smartphones.
But is there a danger that now Snapdragon is so front-and-centre that if a product from Samsung or Dell or whoever goes wrong in some way that Qualcomm is also in the firing line?
“We’re a technology company: we feel we're in the gladiator business. If you build a new technology, and it is successful, well, winning today doesn't give you any guarantee that you're going to win tomorrow. If you win, you’ve only got the right to go to the Coliseum one more time. As for things going wrong, I haven’t thought about it like that. But we’re creating the engine so the driver can win races or lose races and that’s what happens when we think about the products we build. Our customers will have different design choices. The real benefit is for the customer to understand the power of the technology.”
Snapdragon in cars is becoming more mainstream with its Digital Cockpit, as Qualcomm calls it, growing in popularity with car manufacturers. It’s a way for the manufacturers to interact with customers much more intimately. “Besides incredible computing power, making those incredible in-car displays change the experience for the user, generative AI and this whole concept of the computer understanding the English language and running on a device at the edge is perfect for when you are behind the wheel.”
Manufacturers have a chance to forget about that thick, densely-printed manual in the glove compartment and instead will train an AI model on the entire database of the car. If something goes wrong or you want to know how to do something, you just ask the car. “And, more importantly, when something happens with the car and it has a fault, the car will tell you the problem, saying this is what happened and this is the part that needs to be changed. It can offer to set up an appointment to get the repairs done.”
Customers don’t swap their cars as often as they do their phones, and Amon says its latest chips will offer future-proofing or, as he puts it, “the software-designed vehicle is going to get better the longer you own it. It’s going to get more personalised to you, it’s going to have new capabilities and features.”
With lots of companies getting into generative AI, how does Qualcomm stay out in front? “We started talking about generative AI running on a device instead of the cloud before it was popular. The unique thing about what we’re doing is we have the ability to pack a lot of computing power into a small form factor without compromising battery life.”
Amon says a case in point is the Copilot Plus PCs launched by Microsoft with devices running on Qualcomm. “Only on Qualcomm, which was the new entrant to the market, because the existing platforms simply wouldn’t run. You have to run AI 24-7, analysing every pixel on screen and analysing everything you type. What differentiates us is the ability to push the innovation roadmap so that things you only thought possible if they happened at the data centre will now happen on the device.”
