How to ‘Scale’ 5G for Masses ‘Our Next Industry Challenge,’ Says Qualcomm’s Amon
The 5G transition is “the first time” in wireless history that consumer devices debuted “ahead of the networks,” said Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon in an IFA keynote Friday. He used the speech to introduce Snapdragon chipsets he said were designed to bring “scale” faster to global 5G deployments. It’s “not by coincidence” that 5G devices preceded network deployments, but because “we now have a very mature smartphone user base,” said Amon. "We need to enable the operators to have that ecosystem ready” as a springboard to “start building coverage,” he said.
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How to scale 5G is “our next industry challenge,” said Amon. “We launched this technology, but now we’re committed to drive the proliferation of 5G across all device tiers.” Qualcomm is expanding 5G capability across its 7 and 6 Series of Snapdragon devices for lower-tier smartphones, said Amon. He showed what he said was the first “reference design” smartphone using a 7 Series Snapdragon chipset. “We have now 12 OEMs already engaged” to incorporate 7 Series chipsets in smartphones for “commercial readiness” starting late in 2019, he said.
Qualcomm also is expanding its X-55 “platform” to include the world’s first commercially available chipset combining a 5G modem, RF transceiver and RF front end, said Amon. The new X-55 has a wider “feature set to accommodate a broad ecosystem and use cases,” he said. At 7 Gbps, the new X-55 has the industry’s fastest 5G modem, he said.
“Dynamic spectrum-sharing” is the “most important” feature of the X-55 chipset, said Amon. It expands coverage “to every possible band that operators have so they can accelerate the migration” to 5G, he said. The feature allows 4G and 5G devices to “coexist,” he said. “You can start distributing 5G devices and start upgrading your spectrum without having to clear the entire spectrum” of 4G users,” he said. “With that, you have a more economical and faster way to build coverage.”
Industry defied “a lot of skepticism” to introduce 5G smartphones commercially this year, and “not with clunky devices,” said Amon. Devices are “what’s going to help us scale 5G,” he said. He estimated 150 smartphone “designs” have been introduced globally with “Qualcomm 5G solutions” built in.
The 5G transition is a “global phenomenon” that’s “moving very fast,” said Amon. “When we started the transition to 4G, we had four carriers,” and the “few devices” the first year were in “a very limited geography,” he said. By comparison, with 5G, “a wireless transition is happening simultaneously in all leading economies,” he said. The more than 20 operators in 10 countries launching 5G services have 2.2 billion mobile subscribers, he said. “This is an impressive milestone.”