While most companies pulled out of physically attending CES 2022, Qualcomm executives and team made it in person for a series of key announcements highlighting Qualcomm’s diversifying business across every vertical. In his keynote, Qualcomm’s CEO Cristiano Amon announced new offerings, partnerships, customer wins and traction in four key new categories:

• ARM-based PCs, namely Snapdragon on Windows customer launches
• Metaverse – New XR related partnerships and offerings
• Wireless Fiber – FWA and Private Networks
• Mobility – ADAS/AD Automotive Solutions, Tier 1 partnerships and a growing OEM customer roster

The announcements in the Automotive space were the most significant and which we will cover here.

Over recent years CES has become one of the major “automotive technology ” shows attended by the majority of the automotive value chain players, CES 2022 also saw a series of announcements (virtual and physical) from component suppliers such as Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Intel, Tier-1s such as Bosch, Valeo, ZF, Magna, Location Platform providers such as HERE, TomTom, system integrators, software middleware, cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, Apex.AI, OEMs such as Volvo, BMW, GM, Hyundai MetaMobility, others, and new entrants such as Sony.

Qualcomm was one name that in previous years has been associated more with “mobile” rather than “mobility”. However, this has changed significantly over the last couple of years. Qualcomm’s automotive business is thriving; growing more than 80% YoY and touched almost a billion dollars in realized revenues last fiscal year ending September 2021. With more than $13 Billion of design wins in the pipeline, Qualcomm is yet to realize the full potential of the sector. New acquisitions (for example, Veoneer in 2021) will help Qualcomm build a multi-billion dollar automotive solutions business in the mid- to long-term.

Snapdragon Digital Chassis:

The entire automotive architecture is being redefined as the industry undergoes a “CASE”-centric transformation: (Connectivity, Autonomy, Services & Electrification). To capitalize on and catalyse this trend, Qualcomm has a built a highly scalable platform ‘Snapdragon Digital Chassis’  based on a set of technology solutions to power the future of mobility by making the car connected, intelligent, autonomous and safer. The platform emulates a zonal architecture. These solutions allow Tier-1 suppliers and OEMs to develop cutting-edge capabilities that are diverse, customizable, upgradeable and immersive.

Snapdragon Ride platform: Is a highly customizable and scalable platform of SoCs that cover elements of automation and vision perception combined with Veoneer’s Arriver software and toolkits. These empower automotive OEMs and tier-1s to develop powerful, efficient and safe L2+ ADAS/AD and other software capabilities; parking, driver monitoring, maps and so forth. At CES 2022, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon Ride Vision SoC based on a 4nm process node and integrated with the Arriver Vision stack to optimize the camera sensor system and combine data from other sensors and process it based on the driver policies and mobility algorithms to realize industry-leading ADAS/AD capabilities. With this launch, Qualcomm has expanded its offerings to cover the entire ADAS/AD stack directly or indirectly giving it the potential to offer system-level optimization to customers and to capture maximum value.

Snapdragon Cockpit: While ADAS/AD solutions are a few generations old, Qualcomm has been actively present in powering the digital cockpit for multiple auto OEMs over the years. As the digital cockpit in a car undergoes a major overhaul with bigger displays, higher-level OS powering infotainment, HD Maps, content services and so forth, it offers a great opportunity for Qualcomm to leverage and scale its capabilities in touch-screen based smart devices to power the next generation digital cockpits. Qualcomm announced at the show it is working with Volvo and Polestar to power the infotainment systems in their SUVs launching late 2022. Qualcomm is also powering Android-based infotainment systems in Honda’s upcoming car models launching in the USA in the second-half of 2022 and next year, globally, with the third-generation Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Platform. These announcements are in addition to the design wins with BMW, Cadillac, GM and Hyundai. 

Qualcomm also extended its collaboration with Renault Group to adopt the entire Snapdragon Digital Chassis platform across all the capabilities from connectivity to cockpit to ADAS/AD.

Snapdragon Auto Connectivity:

Qualcomm already is the market leader when it comes to embedded telematics connectivity solutions from the major cellular modem to Wi-Fi, GNSS, Bluetooth and more. Qualcomm solutions are adopted by major NAD module players and Tier-1 TCU manufacturers supplying to automotive OEMs. With 5G being adopted in cars starting this year, Qualcomm will further widen its lead over other cellular connectivity solution providers in this segment.

Traction, Design Wins & Pipeline

Qualcomm has significant traction in the automotive industry to power the future of mobility with comprehensive, end-to-end, CASE-centric offerings which no other semiconductor provider possesses putting it in the driver’s seat. The growing customer roster which is not only wide but also deep, with multiple solutions being adopted. This gives Qualcomm a higher % share of the growing semiconductor and software Bill of Materials (BoM) cost per car sold.