Borderless ambitions： Does Qualcomm also have pain points？

　　The name given to Qualcomm by the outside world is nothing more than a sex price butcher, because it can "punch" MediaTek and take over Shanghai ChinaJoy Exhibition Hall as the king of game technical support for four times. For Qualcomm, its road is borderless, and it is also the "poetry and distance" on the cross-border road.

　　Here, there are not only the future dreams of generative AI on the terminal side and in close cooperation with Meta, but also everything including cross-border automobile and even satellite communication ...

　　However, the chip is the foundation of Qualcomm's life. However, under the background that the global macro-environment is depressed and it still takes time for the mobile phone market to fully recover, Qualcomm does have tremendous pressure from the capital market, and a number of competing moments such as Apple, Intel, MediaTek and Huawei HarmonyOS are "stalking".

　　Through ChinaJoy, which just ended, and combing all previous clues, we will find that Qualcomm is no longer the company we are familiar with. Where is the "multi-faceted" Qualcomm without borders and cross-border? Where to go? With the release of Q3 financial report soon, regardless of whether the performance meets or exceeds the capital expectation, the future belonging to Qualcomm is the biggest proposition-is it seawater or flame waiting for it?

　　Four-time package ChinaJoy, head held high and "happy to win"

　　In the just-concluded 2023 ChinaJoy, Qualcomm joined hands with a wide range of ecological partners for the fourth time to build a 12,000-square-meter Snapdragon theme pavilion. China Unicom, Xiaomi, Glory, Yijia, iQOO, Red Devils, Xingji Meizu, Samsung, ROG, realme, Tencent, Netease Games, Perfect World, Mihayou, Gaohe, Weilai, PICO and many other "friends" came to join us, and the four-day Qualcomm digital entertainment feast also gave us insight into Snapdragon and Qualcomm's ambitions.

　　Four-time package ChinaJoy, Qualcomm not only created 11 brand booths with partners, presented more than 30 game masterpieces, but also created more than 100 technical experiences and demonstrations with 89 partners and brands. This action was officially understood by Qualcomm as "bringing partners to build a new pattern of mobile game industry".

　　According to statistics, in 2023, all flagship smartphones will adopt the second generation Snapdragon 8 without exception. This may be the bottom line of ChinaJoy. Because these mobile phones can bring Snapdragon Elite Gaming--- a hardware-based real-time light-chasing mobile gaming experience. Real-time light pursuit, which is the first supported feature of Snapdragon platform, can bring light effects close to the real world in the game.

　　Snapdragon Game Hyperscore, as a single-step hyper-score technology based on airspace information, can save power consumption under the condition of fully releasing performance, greatly improve the game quality, and maximize the game performance and battery life of Snapdragon terminal. Compared with other mobile solutions to improve resolution, Snapdragon Game Super Score can achieve twice the performance improvement. It is understood that tencent games, Netease Games and Lightyear have all taken the lead in introducing the game super-dividing technology of Snapdragon.

　　In addition, compared with OpenGL ES, the main mobile graphics API, Vulkan has sprung up in recent years and become a strong competitor and potential substitute for OpenGL ES. Obviously, Qualcomm will not ignore it, but fully support the latest Vulkan 1.3 on the second generation Snapdragon 8. In summary, the Vulkan version can save 15-18% of power consumption compared with the OpenGL ES version.

　　In short, the performance and energy efficiency are improved, but the power consumption is greatly reduced. The second-generation Snapdragon 8 is bound to become the winner of the flagship smartphone market with its super-division technology, real-time optical tracking and leading graphics. Just this month, One Plus Ace 2 Pro, which will be released by One Plus, is equipped with the second generation Snapdragon 8. With the unification of flagship machine, the mid-to-high-end flagship smartphones, especially game phones, will be staged in a few days. It is no wonder that Qualcomm has shouted the slogan of "winning with great pride".

　　Sex price butcher "punched" MediaTek, not afraid of Apple's "dead knock" game

　　In fact, Qualcomm knows that it will take some time for the global mobile phone market to recover in the downturn. Therefore, Snapdragon 8 Gen2 will be relegated to the price range of 2000, and it is brave to be the "sex price butcher" of MediaTek, which shows Qualcomm's ambition to take all the mobile phone market.

　　Insiders broke the news that some brands have made the model of Snapdragon 8 Gen2 at a price of around 2,000 yuan, and it is not the kind of 2,999 yuan. Thanks to Qualcomm's "sluggishness" in mid-range processors in the past three years, Mediatek has made great progress in Snapdragon in the mid-range market, but it is a pity that no processors rated well by netizens have appeared since Tianji 8100 series. It is no wonder that Qualcomm has to make great efforts in the middle end in the face of the sluggish market in addition to easily occupying the high end.

　　In this regard, some netizens commented that even the Tianji 9200 series is rarely used, because compared with Snapdragon 8Gen 2, Mediatek's mid-range processor can be said to be "directly scrapped", and it is really difficult for Mediatek to cope with it.

　　Qualcomm, which started to play the dimensionality reduction strike, naturally came prepared. Snapdragon 8 Gen2 is the standard of this year's Android flagship mobile phone, and it is also one of Qualcomm's most powerful 5G Soc. Moreover, in terms of GPU, Qualcomm has greatly improved its performance, even supporting the same mobile hardware-level optical tracking technology as the second-generation Snapdragon 8.

　　Of course, compared with Mediatek, the biggest rival of Android phone is Apple. However, Qualcomm is not afraid of Apple's advantages, because it wants to "die" mobile games as the focus of its current and future efforts.

　　The data shows that global players spend about $92 billion on mobile games, accounting for 50% of the global game industry revenue, almost twice as much as console games and PC games. The mobile game industry in China has increased sixfold in the past seven years.

　　Therefore, bypassing Apple's main customer base and locking in hundreds of millions of gamers, Qualcomm's core competitiveness in the mobile gaming experience has also made it embark on a borderless cross-border journey.

　　Boundless Qualcomm, mobile phones and cars are just the "appetizers" on the road in the future?

　　In addition to mobile games, Snapdragon-based game books, XR games, and digital chassis for smart cars are all Qualcomm's layout for Snapdragon.

　　For example, Qualcomm cooperated with Gaohe Automobile and Netease Game Thunder Fire Studio, which enabled multiple players to simultaneously play the All-Star Streetball Party created by Thunder Fire Studio, using the flagship mobile phone equipped with the second-generation Snapdragon 8, the Razer handheld with Snapdragon G3x game platform and the Gaohe HiPhi Y with Snapdragon platform, so as to realize the opening and linkage of the same game across different intelligent terminals. A spokesman for Gaohe Automobile even said that its sub-screen game performance has reached 850,000 in the related projects of Ann Bunny running.

　　In fact, the future of Qualcomm is far more than the mobile game capabilities of mobile phones and cars. For example, at the moment when generative AI has become the frontier of new technology, Qualcomm conducted the world's first Stable Diffusion terminal demonstration running on Android phones at the beginning of the year. At present, generative AI is often associated with the cloud, but Qualcomm believes that with the shrinking of the powerful generative AI model and the continuous improvement of the processing capacity of the terminal side, the potential of hybrid AI will further grow.

　　The data shows that at present, Qualcomm has been able to support models with more than 1 billion parameters to run on the terminal side. In the next few months, the model with more than 10 billion parameters will be expected to run on the terminal side.

　　Qualcomm's ambition still doesn't stop there. Qualcomm recently announced that it will launch LLMA2AI technical support based on Meta research and development from 2024, which is regarded by the industry as a major change in the field of mobile AI, and it is even expected to end Apple's current monopoly position in the field of mobile AI.

　　The close cooperation between Qualcomm and Meta, especially Llama 2, outperforms Llama 1 and other open source language models in several natural language processing benchmarks, which can be used not only for research, but also for commercial purposes. This has opened up enough imagination space for Qualcomm's future.

　　In addition, Qualcomm is also working with industry partners to explore the trillion-dollar satellite communication market. During this year's MWC Shanghai Exhibition, many enterprises, such as Guanghetong and Meguiar Intelligent, adopted Qualcomm solutions to launch satellite Internet of Things solutions conforming to the 3GPP Release 17 standard, which transformed the 5G satellite communication from the cutting-edge technology in the 5G standard into a commercial solution in reality.

　　Satellite communication is indeed a hot spot in recent years. At present, the coverage rate of mobile communication network is only 6% from the perspective of the earth's surface area, and satellite communication can provide network connection services for oceans, forests, deserts and some underdeveloped areas. Two months ago, Qualcomm also cooperated with Skylo, a non-terrestrial network (NTN) service provider, to launch a brand-new modem, which supports the 3GPP Release 17 satellite communication standard, enables global connectivity, and provides convenient terminal setting and positioning functions.

　　On July 31st, Qualcomm also announced the launch of a brand-new long-term product plan for its IoT solution selection catalogue, which was launched on July 27th, and will initially cover 16 different Qualcomm technology companies, IoT system on a chip.

　　To some extent, mobile phones and cars may just be the "appetizers" on the road in the future. In the current environment, Qualcomm without borders must accelerate the realization of wide layout and great transformation. Only in this way can Qualcomm not be the original Qualcomm.

　　Q3 financial report will be released soon, and the future beyond Qualcomm's performance is the biggest proposition.

　　Qualcomm will announce the results of the third quarter of fiscal year 2023 after the US stock market closes on August 2, US Eastern Time (the morning of August 3, Beijing time). According to the expected data of the investment research platform Seeking Alpha, analysts generally expect the total revenue of Qualcomm Q3 to reach 8.51 billion US dollars, down 22.2% from the same period of last year; Qualcomm Q3' s adjusted earnings per share (under Non-GAAP criteria) is expected to be $1.81, compared with $2.15 in the previous quarter and $2.96 in the same period last year.

　　With the release of Q3 financial report approaching, the capital market pays close attention to its performance. People are looking forward to Qualcomm's performance in the highly competitive chip market and whether it can cope with the current supply chain challenges and market dynamic changes. In fact, beyond performance, Qualcomm's future is the biggest proposition left to Qualcomm itself and the capital market.

　　Whether it's AI or satellite communication, Qualcomm in the future still can't get around the "four-piece set" of mobile phones, PCs, handhelds and cars. For example, intelligent networked cars are the long-term layout of Qualcomm. In the past two years, Qualcomm has supported more than 40 global automobile brands, including China enterprises, to release more than 100 new energy intelligent networked vehicles. On July 31st, Zero Run Auto released the central integrated electronic and electrical architecture. This architecture named "Four-leaf clover" was officially claimed by Zero Run Auto that a Qualcomm chip can realize L2+.

　　However, as early as 2021, new and old car companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Weilai, Tucki and Ideality all established close cooperation with NVIDIA, and NVIDIA's chips were widely used in L4-L5 self-driving cars. Nvidia's $40 billion acquisition of chip design company ARM has made it the absolute overlord in the mobile processor market (more than 95% of smartphones and tablets in the world adopt ARM architecture, and processors from Huawei, Apple and Qualcomm are no exception). Some analysts pointed out that NVIDIA is expected to reach a similar market position to Intel in the PC era and Qualcomm in the smart phone era, and become an important supplier that car companies cannot circumvent. Then, how big a cake can Qualcomm, which is based on chips, get?

　　With the release of Q3 financial report and the official answering questions in the conference call with analysts, it may give us a better understanding of Qualcomm's present situation and future. And where is the borderless Qualcomm? Will it be seawater or flame waiting for it?