Qualcomm to focus on offering reference designs in India

Qualcomm is likely to focus on offering its reference designs in India. It would offer design licences to hardware design houses and original design manufacturers. For the San Diego-based chipmaker, about 36 per cent of its global revenue is accounted for by licence fees.

“Design licences enable hardware design houses to use Qualcomm designs as the reference and customise the design of the final commercial product, incorporating local specifications,” said Avneesh Agrawal, president, Qualcomm India and South Asia. “It’s at an early stage, but holds huge potential,” he said, adding Qualcomm also offered engineering support to licensees.

Currently, four to five companies in India have Qualcomm licences. These companies primarily work for global handset manufacturers. Though most handsets were still manufactured in China, there was demand for custom designs in India, thanks to tablet makers, Agrawal said, adding, “We are seeing some interesting activities in the tablet space, especially in the sub-Rs 10,000 category.”

Though a lot of work is underway in product and application design, manufacturing final products is still at a nascent stage in India. “Manufacturing is the next phase of growth. But it will take a few years,” said Agrawal, adding for chip designing, India was “very important” for Qualcomm.

In October 2012, Qualcomm, Bharti Airtel and Huawei announced the first multi-mode LTE-TDD smartphone in India. “We believe the 4G revolution will take place as an extension of 3G,” Agrawal said.

The government should allocate more spectrum for 3G, he added.

Recently, Qualcomm had announced the expansion of a display technology development pact between Qualcomm’s wholly-owned subsidiary Pixtronix and Sharp Corporation. Qualcomm has also made an equity investment in Sharp. The alliance would help Qualcomm develop low-power displays for various high-performance devices, including smartphones and tablets.