Qualcomm is looking to help make India a hub for design capabilities for smartphones, tablets and IoT. The company is also looking to leverage India’s engineering talent to scale innovation for both local consumption, and rest of the world. On those lines, Qualcomm is setting up an Innovation Lab in Bangalore, India to provide technical and engineering support to the home grown companies.
In the very recent past, Qualcomm had also hosted the Design in India Challenge in association with NASSCOM to accelerate the creation of a product and hardware design ecosystem in India for healthcare, education, banking, agriculture, automotive, wearables and smartcities.
We at FoneArena had a chance to speak to Sunil Lalvani, the President of Qualcomm India at the Make in India week, which took place in Mumbai last month. Here’s the transcript from our talk..
FoneArena: How is Qualcomm contributing to “Make In India” ?
Sunil: We are doing a lot as a part of Make in India initiative. India consumes more smartphones and mobiles phone than we can manufacture. The need of the hour when we speak to OEMs is the speed to market and the design element needs to localized. We enable this through Qualcomm Reference Design or QRD. How we enable that ecosystem is through the design house by making sure that the whole fabrication, mechanical design, the PCB layout, the component selection, RF unit is all done in a certain manner.
Work is also done on carrier networks, spectrum bands, localized content, localized applications. Manufacturing happens outside and then the components are imported into India. They are then tested within India which ends with the final tablet or smartphone. While most of the manufacturing happens outside the country, most of the design, tuning and testing happens in India.
FoneArena: So why does most of the manufacturing still happen outside India?
Sunil: A large portion of the manufacturing still happens outside India since they are part of an ecosystem. Some of the components are not available locally and as a result, a lot of them have to be sourced from overseas. There will be some level of components which will always have to be imported. But we are supporting the Make in India initiative where we push the design element to be done within India itself. Slowly but surely, most of the components will actually be manufactured in India.
We are talking with partners to expedite this process and certain companies will be able to start a manufacturing process in India sooner than others. So as far as the different phases of the Make in India initiative are concerned, this is a good starting point.
FoneArena: Does the Make in India initiative actually improve the product shipping times considerably?
Sunil: What QRD (Qualcomm Reference Design) does is basically create a reference design architecture and based on the localized needs, it can be customized. The speed and time to manufacture improves significantly. So the reference design architecture is given to the OEMs and ODMs to start manufacturing instead of building a product from the ground up. The Snapdragon 810 on the YU flagship smartphone is a good example of how the ecosystem is moving up the value chain. Looking at the scale of the Indian market, customization is very important.
The benefit of the QRD platform is the speed to the market.The question that OEMs need an answer to is how to capture a larger market share since the market in India is huge. Considering how short most of the product cycles are these days, QRD poses a huge benefit since it ensures a much faster product roll out.
FoneArena: Could you throw some light about the QPrize challenge?
Sunil: Qualcomm through its venture investment group, Qualcomm Ventures had announced QPrize – Make in India contest in association with the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion. The goal of this contest is to catalyze Indian entrepreneurs and the startup community to drive the entire value chain from innovation to manufacturing in India. The winner will receive an investment of Rs. 2 crores as prize money.
Qualcomm has also supported the Government’s vision of Make in India by recently announcing the Qualcomm Design in India Initiative. Now with the “QPrize Make in India” contest, the company aims to energize the startup ecosystem to join this movement towards creation of a local design and manufacturing ecosystem.
FoneArena: What do you think about the Government’s mandate towards multi-language support?
Sunil: As part of the Digital India initiative the government is soon going to make multi-language support mandatory for mobile devices sold in the country which is a great move. We have tied up with Reverie to enable multi-lingual support for Qualcomm based devices. The application in the back-end could be running in English but at real time users can use the app in the language of their choice even for financial transactions like with the HDFC securities app we are showcasing.
FoneArena: Previously, there were issues with 4G devices supporting multiple LTE bands on the same SKU. However, that seems to be solved now. How’s it going to work moving forward?
Sunil: Carriers have played a big role in the push towards 4G LTE and that has created awareness in the minds of consumers. Qualcomm is here to ensure that the devices are ready for the network and support multiple bands as and when the carriers roll out 4G LTE on their networks. We work with OEMs and channel partners, both online as well as offline to create awareness on what 4G LTE actually is.
Since, there is a smaller price delta, we are seeing many customers who buy a 4G smartphone directly as an upgrade from their 2G smartphone instead of opting for a 3G one. Qualcomm plays an important role in bridging that price gap and making these 4G LTE handsets as affordable as possible for the end consumer.
FoneArena: What are your thoughts on the Indian mobile market and 4G’s uptake?
Sunil: Price delta between 3G and 4G devices have come down significantly. Carriers are rolling out 4G very quickly and the demand for 4G is on an upswing. Airtel was the first to roll out their 4G network, now Vodafone and Idea have made announcements, Jio’s launch is pending. The market is moving towards 4G LTE and as carriers roll out more and more areas with 4G coverage, it is only going to accelerate.
FoneArena: What’s next for Qualcomm in India? What are your challenges?
Sunil: Design in India to fuel Make in India is the main objective we are driving towards. We see more opportunities than challenges in India especially with the supply vs demand gap with respect to the smartphones in the country. Only challenge is how the component ecosystem evolves in India as some parts of the manufacturing will take time to come to India, such as fab units. There is no timeline for complete phone manufacturing to happen in India.
FoneArena: How is Qualcomm positioning its Snapdragon powered devices to consumers? Or is it something taken care by the manufacturer?
Sunil: Consumers are becoming more discerning. In the age of selfies, camera is a very important feature, processor is becoming a deciding factor too. Battery life and connectivity too are key features. As consumers are moving from 3G to 4G or from 2G to 4G there is a need for educating the consumer on benefit of Snapdragon and our offerings. This education needs to be two fold, at the OEM level and also at the online/offline retail level and it is part of our go-to-market strategy.
FoneArena: What else is in Qualcomm’s radar from an India perspective ?
Sunil: Another area we are looking at from an India perspective is Smart cities. We have done some work in certain other markets around the globe and the Indian government too has already announced a number of Smart Cities. We are also working with our ecosystem partners around that. We also see opportunity for Drones being used for agriculture in India.