San Diego-based Qualcomm, the world’s leading innovator in wireless products, solutions and technologies, is working with telecom operators and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to develop a 5G smartphone priced below $99 (around Rs 8,000). The phone is likely to be launched by the end of the current calendar year, Qualcomm’s senior vice president and general manager of handsets, Chris Patrick said at the ongoing World Mobile Congress in Barcelona.
While the company did not share names of telcos and other players it is working with, in 2020, Qualcomm Ventures, the investment arm of Qualcomm had invested Rs 730 crore in Jio Platforms, which translates into 0.15% equity stake.
The companies developing a smartphone priced at Rs 8,000 is significant in the sense that it may accelerate the migration of 2G users to 4G and 5G services. While Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea have 2G users, Jio’s network is fully 4G-5G. There are smartphones priced around Rs 8,000 in the market today but the upcoming product is expected to be packed with more features – higher RAM and processor – which may make it more attractive to consumers.
Jio has 4G feature phones in the market like JioPhone and JioBharat, but they are not attractive as smartphones because apps cannot be downloaded on them. These phones have some pre-burnt apps which work on them.
According to Qualcomm, the low-cost customised chipset will be capable of gigabit 5G speeds in smartphones leverging standalone architecture, which would be up to five times higher than 4G within this smartphone price category.
Qualcomm has been working for long to bring down the price of its chipsets especially to launch affordable 5G smartphones in the country.
Last year, Qualcomm’s former India president Rajen Vagadia told FE that “while there are a lot of financing schemes, we are working to make 5G phones more affordable. I see probably by the end of the year (2023), we will bring down the price of entry level 5G phones below Rs 10,000 and that will again increase the demand”.
Qualcomm has a hardware design base in Bengaluru and software design base in Hyderabad for solutions such as multimedia software and wireless modem, among other things. The company is utilising both the teams in Hyderabad and Bengaluru to design such chipsets and other innovative products for global use.
Currently, there are 250-300 million 2G feature phone users in the country, and the penetration to smartphones has been slow. In fact, the trend has been that mostly people on 2G are moving up the chain to 4G feature phones.
According to brokerage firm CLSA, the 4G feature phone shipments in the country rose 63% sequentially to 8.2 million in the October-December quarter. The growth was led by JioBharat phones.
Of the overall market, 5G smartphone shipment share crossed 52% in 2023, with a 66% year-on-year growth. This is because the companies started taking 5G to the lower segments, according to Counterpoint.
