Qualcomm's super-powerful CPU is on the way

On the morning of July 2, Qualcomm officially announced that the current Qualcomm president, Amon, officially took office as Qualcomm CEO.

Amon also published a brief inauguration speech through social media: "I am very honored to serve as CEO of Qualcomm and have the opportunity to lead such an amazing company. 25 years ago, I joined Qualcomm as an engineer. One thing we have always insisted on over the years is to focus on the research and development of transformative leading technologies. I believe that this will never change."

It is understood that on January 5 this year, Qualcomm officially announced that the company's CEO Steve Mollenkopf will officially retire on June 30, and will be succeeded by Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon, effective June 30, 2021.

According to the editor, Amon is 50 years old and joined Qualcomm in 1995. He gradually grew from an engineer to a technical management position and became the president of Qualcomm in January 2018.

During his tenure as president, Amon led the development of an industry-leading, differentiated product roadmap, created the company's 5G strategy and its commercial acceleration and global deployment, while driving the diversification and expansion of Qualcomm's business into multiple new industries.

It is worth mentioning that in his first media interview after officially taking over the position of CEO, Amon mentioned two heavyweight partners - Apple and Huawei.

When talking about the Chinese market, Huawei is a topic that cannot be avoided. Amon pointed out that in terms of high-end, the potential opportunities behind Huawei are not inferior to winning big customers like Apple.

As for the rumors that Apple is about to launch its own 5G chip, Amon also confidently emphasized that Qualcomm has accumulated decades of experience in designing baseband chips, which is difficult for any competitor to replicate.

According to statistics from Strategy Analytics, in the first quarter of this year, Qualcomm's revenue share in the global baseband market was 53%, far ahead of the second-place MediaTek (25%) and the third-place Samsung (10%). Its market share in 5G baseband reached 70%.

In addition, in the most recent fiscal year, of Qualcomm's $16.5 billion in chip revenue, as much as $12.8 billion came from mobile phones, which is a core business that cannot be lost and needs to be further strengthened.

However, as the smartphone market gradually becomes saturated, Huawei's business is restricted, and Apple is about to launch its own 5G chips, Qualcomm must strengthen its business capabilities in other areas as soon as possible. Therefore, in his first interview after taking office, Amon announced the self-developed CPU processor architecture, which is likely to become Qualcomm's key development direction in the next few years.

Amon confirmed that the processor was designed by Apple's former senior architecture team and will be the best chip on the market, with better battery life compared to competing products from Intel, AMD, and Apple platforms.

Amon also emphasized that this processor is not the same as the ARM public version used in mobile phones, but is completely self-developed. At the same time, their advantage is that they can naturally bring 5G support to notebooks.