Everything around us is either already a lot smarter or aiming to join the Internet of Things (IoT) wave.
Qualcomm Technologies is positioning itself to be the one to make it a reality, writes Leilani DeLeon, head of IoT marketing at Qualcomm.
We are best known for creating the processors that power some of the most premium smartphones and laptops, and we have spent years adding connectivity and intelligence to a growing number of products, from automobiles to cameras and drones. Now, we’re taking a new approach to enabling intelligence in IoT that will serve a much wider number of verticals.
“We’re organising ourselves to be highly relevant in this space,” Nakul Duggal, group GM: automotive, industrial and embedded IoT, and cloud computing, said during the recent Qualcomm Investor Day presentation. “I’m confident we’ll see the same success we’ve seen in other industries.”
Our IoT strategy encompasses a comprehensive suite of technologies, components, solutions and developer support that is specifically curated for the needs of each industry. The strategy is modeled after our successful Snapdragon Digital Chassis solution, which is already driving the development of the next generation of connected vehicles and bringing more smarts to the automotive industry.
This new approach was one of the key topics during our Investor Day presentation on Tuesday. It also represents a broader approach that we are taking, going beyond the chipset and expanding our scope to focus on the solutions that end customers are looking for.
This comes as more industries are looking to take part in the digital revolution, driven by everything from the need to modernize and connect their aging infrastructure, to the promise of generative artificial intelligence (AI). By 2026, global spending on digital transformation is expected to hit $3,4-trillion, with a compound annual growth rate of 16,3% over five years, according to research firm IDC.1
We are poised to take advantage of this opportunity thanks to our drive to help companies inject intelligence into the edge and operate more efficiently and effectively.
Here’s what makes our approach a critical tool in the digital revolution.
A new IoT focus
Companies looking to add intelligence to the edge, whether they’re tracking products in a warehouse or with surveillance cameras in a secured energy facility, face challenges ranging from non-uniform deployment to unreliable connectivity.
Qualcomm Technologies hopes to solve this by bringing a more strategic and unified approach to our hardware portfolio alongside customised solutions tailored to the specific needs of an industry.
It starts with two fundamental principles: the edge is intelligent, and the edge is connected. From there, solutions can be mixed and matched to address everything from healthcare to retail, energy and enterprise.
The strategy involves creating scalable blueprints for every vertical, looking for similarities across industries for different solutions and creating bespoke solutions as needed.
At the core of this solution are Qualcomm Technologies’ components, including specialised enterprise-class processors like the Qualcomm IQ Series that provide AI capabilities alongside 5G and other wireless connections in extreme environments. Here are some of the other elements of the blueprint:
- Hardware stack
- Software stack
- Edge AI infrastructure
- Services
- Deployment solutions
- Location and observability services
Ecosystem partners like system integrators, resellers and developers, meanwhile, can tap into the resources provided by us such as the Qualcomm AI Hub or our Qualcomm IoT Solution Framework. Large enterprises can work directly with us to figure out their own custom solutions.
Taken together, this approach is both universally applicable across different industries and flexible enough to allow for bespoke solutions catering to specific needs.