‘Digital India, Smart Cities will push deals’

Chipmaker Qualcomm, known for its product Snapdragon in smartphones, expects major deals to come through the Government’s Digital India and Smart Cities programmes. The company is also working on Internet of things (IoT), which it says would be big booster after smartphone sales.

In an interview to BusinessLine, Sandeep Sibal, Country Manager and Vice-President (Business Development), Qualcomm India and South Asia, shares his views. Excerpts:

What opportunities do you see in terms of revenue, especially with 4G smartphones coming up?

The more smartphones get sold, the better for us. For example, on LTE, we are on fifth generation and we see ourselves as ‘the leaders’ in LTE.

Within LTE, we are on cutting edge such as carrier aggregation, which can combine all MHz into a virtual single pipe – for better efficiency and higher speed (of mobile network bandwidth) to the end user.

Many smartphone companies have enabled and deployed it in many markets like Korea, which would happen in India soon.

More than 50 4G smartphones have been launched over the last three months, and with operators launching different apps, value proposition is good.

Does Qualcomm have products in place for Internet of things (IoT)?

We do. We are working with car companies, wearables and smart cities.

There are some aspects with IoT and we are championing in one product called ‘Allseen alliance’ that lets these different devices talk to each other – whether it’s in a home, car or city.

We are trying to get vendors to build the devices that can ‘talk to’ each other. Just like what has happened to smartphones, the next big boom will be of IoTs – whether it is home, cities or body – and the deployment of technologies that we have built for smartphones can be easily deployed in these contexts.

What kind of opportunities do you see from ‘Smart cities’ and ‘Make in India’?

The smart cities project fits in right with the Digital India and Make in India programmes because if you have to make in India, then you should have a place where you can test devices.

There is a belief that “yes, this can increase our GDP. It can improve business in India and bring lot of values for both the Government and people”.

We are also working on standards activities in India: Telecom Standards Development Society of India. We have a working group that is working on 5G.

Therefore, the multi-vendors scenario can happen in a smooth fashion.

We have different providers for smart cities who are using our solutions to deliver connected water meters and connected lighting systems.

Not all of them have utilised in India as yet, but globally we have certain vendors who are using our chipsets to deliver their products globally. India is few months away.

What are the challenges faced by such projects?

Planning a smart city is fairly complex. There are issues with respect to business models, and around the architecture etc.

If you are talking say smart lighting, does it mean that you add on (to what exists)? Plus, who owns the assets – is it the municipality or the State Government?

A smart city will involve multiple vendors working on different areas. Therefore, system integration is a challenge. These require discussions and companies including Qualcomm can be brought in as reference points.

What about the cost of these products?

Just like in smartphones, it is a question of volumes. Once we see volumes, we will see cost coming down. The cost pressure is there and there is enough competition in the market, which is good and there will be a natural tendency to keep the prices in check.

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