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The following is a conversation with Cristiano Amon, the CEO of Qualcomm, the company that s one of the leaders in the world in the space of mobile communication and computation.
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That s 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G that connects billions of phones and the Snapdragon processor and system on a chip that is the brain of most of the premium Android phones in the world.
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And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor.
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Check them out in the description.
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It s the best way to support this podcast.
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We got Scale for machine learning, Truebill for savings, Buy Optimizers for health, Four Sigmatic for coffee, and Fundrise for investing.
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Choose wisely, my friends.
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And now, onto the full ad reads.
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As always, no ads in the middle.
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I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors.
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I enjoy their stuff.
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Maybe you will, too.
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This episode is brought to you by Scale, the machine learning assisted data labeling platform.
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Scale Rapid works with any use case or task, including image, video, text, annotation and classification, 3D data, and supports 20 plus languages.
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data, the selection of high quality data, is an art form, is a science, is an engineering craft, and is the thing that makes the difference between a machine learning system that works or doesn t.
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It is the data that you train the thing on, and iteratively speaking, it is the data that you keep feeding into the system to improve the weak points of the system.
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Anyway, go to scale.com slash lex.
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This show is brought to you by Truebill, a new app that helps you identify and stop paying for subscriptions you don t need, want, or simply forgot about.
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It s an absurd thing, honestly, to me, that subscriptions
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Make it hard to cancel.
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I understand intuitively you think, all right, well, I m going to trap customers in by making sign-up easy and cancellation hard.
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But I think the counterintuitive and very true notion is if the cancellation is hard, people are not going to trust your service.
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The next sponsor is BuyOptimizers.
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They have a new magnesium supplement.
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You should definitely listen to Andrew Huberman, who is big on magnesium, but also knows a lot about it, and he explains to you which ones you should be using, when, and so on, and what the benefits are.
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I just trust him and trust the science.
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Anyway, just get your magnesium if you re doing keto, if you re fasting.
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But in general, it s just good to have in your body.
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This show is also brought to you by Four Sigmatic, the maker of delicious mushroom coffee and plant-based protein.
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It s the thing I start my day with.
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It s like I m a Pavlov s dog.
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I smell the coffee, the aroma.
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I feel the warmth when I put my hand on the mug in the morning.
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And that s when I know it s time to get some shit done.
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Yeah, I don t know.
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I don t know what my life would be like without a morning coffee.
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In fact, introspecting on this now,
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Sometimes when I travel, I don t get the morning coffee and I honestly not sure it s the caffeine.
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I think it s the ritual that really makes me feel like home, like the place where I feel happy and the place where I can be productive.
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Anyway, get up to 40% off and free shipping on mushroom coffee bundles if you go to foursigmatic.com slash Lex.
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That s foursigmatic.com slash Lex.
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This episode is also brought to you by Fundrise, spelled F-U-N-D-R-I-S-E.
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Boy, is that fun to say, for two of the letters especially.
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about investment on this podcast.
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I don t know anything about investment, but I do believe that diversification is a good thing.
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First of all, with money, but also in life.
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Maybe there s certain small aspects of life you should give yourself over to completely, but I think investment-wise you should diversify, and this is a great way to diversify.
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Anyway, check out Fundrise at fundrise.com slash Lex.
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That s F-U-N-D-R-I-S-E.com slash Lex.
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This is the Lex Friedman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Cristiano Amon.
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you
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You are originally from Brazil, so let me ask the most important question, the most profound question, the biggest question.
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Who s the greatest football, soccer player of all time?
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Look, everybody s gonna say Pelé, and actually I was born during the game of Brazil and Italy that Pelé gave Brazil the championship.
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Actually it was, my dad tells me that the doctor had a TV on at the delivery room.
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But, so everybody will say Pelé, but I really like Ronaldo.
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The first, not Ronaldinho, the first Ronaldo, I really like him.
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That s my favorite player.
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By the way, not everybody would say Pelé.
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Yes.
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But we should leave that on the table and agree to disagree.
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Brazilians will say Pelé.
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Yes.
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There s other countries around that region that may disagree a little bit.
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I m very aware.
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Qualcomm is largely responsible for 5G and some of the greatest processors in our smartphones ever built.
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So we got communication and computation tech that impacts probably billions of people.
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So if you zoom out, you as a human will look at humans on earth in general.
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Does it blow your mind that we have these billions of smartphones communicating and each of them have the computational power, you know, you talk about 10 billion transistors, that s a million times more than 50 years ago in the best computers in the world.
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Like if you just zoom out as a human, does that blow your mind?
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Absolutely.
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Look, one of the reasons I think I love this company is we know that the technology we develop can change the world.
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And I ll tell you one more thing.
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Beyond the amount of processing power that you have now in the palm of your hands and being everyone in the world is connected with broadband technology, the smartphone is also mankind s largest development platform.
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There s nothing like it.
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So you respect both the hardware and the software?
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Both.
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Both.
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If aliens were observing Earth over the past 50 to 70 years, how do you think they would describe this particular turmoil, fun things going on on the surface of this particular little planet?
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We live in interesting times.
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In one time, we see incredible development of technology for mankind, just what happened in the last century.
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From 1900 to 2000, it was incredible development.
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Just look, 2000 was 22 years ago.
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How far we re coming and where we re going with technology.
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It s incredible.
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what do you think they would notice?
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So there s road networks, there s all kinds of networks, there s lights that keep popping up, cities springing up, like from an alien perspective, you re observing that.
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Well, what I m gonna tell you is you have this contrast of incredible development of technology, but then you see some of the things that are happening right now, which is probably you would not expect them to happen on the 21st century, just what happened in Ukraine.
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So I think that that will be a more puzzling question for the aliens, I would imagine.
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The new technology is kind of impressive.
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Actually, that might not be so puzzling because that s just human nature revealing itself as it has throughout human history.
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That s correct.
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Let s talk about wireless communication.
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So Qualcomm was instrumental in developing 5G.
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Now you were with Qualcomm since the early days, the good old 90s with the 2G.
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But what is 5G, including sub six gigahertz 5G and millimeter wave 5G?
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How does it work?
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And maybe the most important question is how will it change the world in the coming years?
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When we set ourselves to develop 5G, and we look at this, every generation of technology had a problem to be solved, right?
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So you mentioned 2G, 2G challenge, the challenge of CDMA was, can we give every person on earth a cell phone?
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That was, can you get to a technology that you can basically allow everyone to have a mobile phone?
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3G was about the ability to connect that to the internet.
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I think 4G was broadband, and with 4G, it was about have the ability for you to have a computer in the palm of your hand.
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We ll just talk about that.
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5G, the challenge was a little bit different.
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is how do we build a technology for a society that is gonna be 100% connected to the cloud?
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How do we provide a technology that is going to be the last mile connectivity for everything?
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So 5G is basically been designed, eliminate all issues with data congestion, whether you are in stadium, we talk about soccer, you were in a stadium and everyone should be ability to have access to broadband.
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So deal with congestion.
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deal with the fact that not only people, but billions of things need to be connected.
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Create a technology that for the first time in wireless, you could deliver mission critical services.
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Wireless used to, up to 4G is its best effort.
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In 5G, it can guarantee that you are connected with the cloud.
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And then the last point of that,
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is provide this fabric that will allow us as a society to look at things that are not connected and say, that s the exception.
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That s why we made a comparison in the early days of 5G, that that s gonna be like electricity.
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Right now, you don t have a discussion about what s the use cases for electricity.
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You don t talk about that anymore.
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You just assume it s there.
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And that s how we think about everything connected to the cloud.
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That s what 5G is, and that s the role of 5G.
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So first of all, everything connected to the cloud is interesting because the space of everything is constantly increasing.
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You know, I don t think the refrigerator over there, it looks kind of smart, but I don t think it s connected yet.
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to the cloud, so this includes internet of things.
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What is the full space of everything?
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The full space of everything is, it s maybe going back to where you start defining Qualcomm.
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Qualcomm is about communications and advanced computers for low power devices.
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And can we make everything smart?
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It can range from the robot you have right now on the floor
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to your refrigerator, to a camera, to machines in manufacturing, to retail, et cetera.
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I can give you some examples.
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When we think of something as simple as going to the grocery shop,
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We see technology now with something, the stuff we ve been working with companies like Walmart, electronic shelf labels.
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The ability for you to have smart cameras that can look at shelves and can, the camera s smart enough to say some product needs to be replenished.
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Ability to see with stress.
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So it s about really providing processor connectivity, artificial intelligence,
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to everything and I think that s one of the largest addressable markets we have for technology because you can t really define everything.
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Right, exactly.
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It s a nice market because it keeps growing potentially exponentially in speed.
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What about coverage?
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So how are we doing on the everything part?
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So there is, like I mentioned, sub six gigahertz 5G, and there s millimeter wave 5G.
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So not all 5G is made the same.
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So there s a speed, there s a bandwidth thing, and then there s coverage.
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How many people get to enjoy today, and how does the progress in the next five, 10, 20, 30, 50 years you think looks like in terms of coverage?
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Great topic of conversation.
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So let s talk about this.
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When I meet with regulators across the globe, I tell them resistance is futile.
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Allocate every spectrum to wireless.
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Every spectrum needs to be allocated to wireless.
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The reality is when we start moving from CDMA to OFDMA,
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we knew that this industry has done a lot to get more bits per Hertz.
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But the reality is the massive amount of improvements that is required in capacity and in speed, you need more spectrum.
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There s not so much we can rely on more bits per Hertz.
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You just need more spectrum.
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And if you look,
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For example, what carriers since the 2G era, they participate in different license and auctions and every spectrum they accumulated from 2G or 3G or 4G.
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All of that, you may be able to get one or two channels max of sub 6, which is a channels about 100 megahertz or 200 megahertz.
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And that s it.
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So we need more spectrum.
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So 5G has been designed to work across every spectrum from the low frequency bands.
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That s what we call the sub 6.
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but you needed more, you needed to go to the millimeter wave.
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So that s why 5G is a technology that you can deploy from 450 megahertz as an example, or 600 or 700, all the way to in the 42 gigahertz.
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And that s where millimeter wave comes into the picture.
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Now,
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Let s now connect this to your question about coverage of 5G.
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The easiest thing to do is to deploy 5G in the new spectrum you can get, which is in the sub-6, you see bands being auctioned across the globe in the 3.5 gigahertz.
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There s nothing special about the band.
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It s just the only one that was available because everything else has been used for 4G.
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And you can deploy on that going to existing cell towers and just put a new equipment without having to build new towers.
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SPEAKER_01
But when we go to technologies such as millimeter wave, then you have to build more dense networks.
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You need to build more stations because a deployment in that case look like a Wi-Fi deployment.
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It s almost like Wi-Fi access points.
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When you need to build more stations, you need permits, you need to build fiber, so it takes more time to densify.
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So what you see happening is coverage has been built fast with sub-6 across the globe.
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Now the United States also have the sub-6, so that gets you to coverage very fast.
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SPEAKER_01
But millimeter wave,
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It s moving.
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And if I will say, for example, Verizon, the United States has had a leadership in building Millimeter Wave.
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It takes time.
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I ll say cities like Chicago, Manhattan starting to get coverage.
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It will be a process over a number of years as you build those different access point type networks, but it s inevitable.
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SPEAKER_00
there s not enough spectrum.
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SPEAKER_00
So every 5G operator, just a matter of time, will have millimeter wave as well.
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SPEAKER_01
Resistance is futile.
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SPEAKER_01
Okay, so for millimeter wave, we need density of access points.
1
SPEAKER_01
And what s the biggest resistance?
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SPEAKER_01
for Qualcomm, for human civilization?
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SPEAKER_01
Is it politicians, regulators, federal regulators?
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Is it individual humans?
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Is it not enough money from the consumer perspective?
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Who is the biggest pain in the butt?
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from a Qualcomm standpoint, but answering the question about what it takes to build all this technology.
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I think regulators across the board understood the importance of 5G.
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I have not met a regulator that said, it s really important to be late on 5G.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t think anybody wants to be late on 5G.
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And as a result, we ve seen enormous amount of progress in getting spectrum allocated to 5G.
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SPEAKER_00
I think the real issue is the time that it takes to build infrastructure.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, investment in 5G infrastructure, especially millimeter wave, is like building roads and ports.
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SPEAKER_00
It s critical infrastructure.
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SPEAKER_00
And those things take time.
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SPEAKER_00
Like one of the number one obstacle you re going to hear from operators is site permit.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, sometimes they have to negotiate municipality by municipality.
1
SPEAKER_00
about permits to get new cell sites, but the networks will be densified and you re going to need all of that capacity for the promise of the fully immersive augmented reality that will replace phones and everything being connected 100% of the time.
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SPEAKER_01
This would not be a conversation with a CEO if I did not ask questions that make you nervous.
1
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Some people raise concerns about there not being enough studies about the effects of 5G on the human body.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is 5G safe?
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SPEAKER_00
Look, I have a very simple answer to this question.
1
SPEAKER_00
As we built new capabilities, such as 5G, power is going down.
1
SPEAKER_00
Especially when you think about reducing the number of base stations, the network s becoming more dense.
1
SPEAKER_00
So as you do that, the power becomes lower.
1
SPEAKER_00
If your phone- Power radiated from- Power radiated from the phone and from the tower.
1
SPEAKER_00
As you get closer to the tower, you don t need that much power to reach the tower.
1
SPEAKER_00
So as we move from 4G to 5G, I think we see a reduction in the amount of powers required to close the radio link.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now, also you have a number of organizations, the FCC, for example, has rigorous programs, which they do a lot of tests to validate, you know, the safety of those devices.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think we have, has been a model for other countries to also to adopt the same things.
1
SPEAKER_00
Cellular s been around for a number of decades now.
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I think smartphone is our most beloved device today.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I would argue how it s difficult to answer those questions because you, but I ll argue that the data to date have we seen in 3G and 4G, you know, has shown that a lot of the initial concerns were not valid.
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SPEAKER_00
We look at 5G, even though it s new, it s just less power.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we look at it from a physics standpoint.
1
SPEAKER_01
So from a physics, from a biology perspective, there s a lot of evidence, there s studies that show that it s not dangerous, that it is in fact safe.
1
SPEAKER_01
However, the concern that people have is when you scale technology exponentially, how will that change human civilization?
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, that doesn t apply to 5G, that applies to every technology.
1
SPEAKER_01
You said smartphone is the most beloved device, but love sometimes hurts.
1
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The impact on society, we don t know.
1
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And there s a little bit of fear, there s both excitement and fear.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s a great topic of conversation, actually.
1
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So let me give you my perspective on this.
1
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And you started to see some things actually happening right now.
1
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So let me step back and let s talk about the fact that we are in a fully interconnected society, that when you look of the situation today, we talk about smartphones, largest development platform, so much now of our life,
1
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we are connected to the smartphone, and we are all connected, and we re connected, and then we re building digital twins of everything, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So when you look at that picture, when you look at the picture, this connected society, you started to have the following thoughts, which I think are very healthy, which means in the same way that in the physical world,
1
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You re entitled to some rights, you have obligations, and there s a lot of things that protect your integrity.
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I think as a rule, we re gonna see the society evolving so those things extend to your digital being of people and things.
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And I think just natural, it s just natural.
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It s just a natural path.
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And you started to see things like that.
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For example, the Europeans has done a lot in this area.
1
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I ll say the Europeans probably ahead in the United States.
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I m thinking about privacy laws, digital privacy laws, most recently the DMA, the Digital Markets Act, which I think is a great thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think we re, we believe there s incredible thought into enable ability to regulate the digital markets so that there s innovation and competitions and not a single company can control all the data and then decide, you know,
1
SPEAKER_00
how things are gonna work on the digital realm.
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SPEAKER_00
And even if we think about the potential things like the metaverses, we re connecting physical and digital spaces.
1
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So I think it s a natural evolution.
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Of course regulation and laws always follow technology.
1
SPEAKER_00
But the fact that we re moving toward interconnected society, there s no going back.
1
SPEAKER_00
We are a fully interconnected society.
1
SPEAKER_00
But there is opportunity to think about how the digital to win, people and government should think about it so that we get the best of a technology without any downside.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so when you say digital twin, that s one of the other things you re excited about, which is the metaverse, or basically building worlds in the digital space.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you have to start to think about all the basic human rights that transfer from our physical meat vehicles out to the digital copies of ourselves, representations of ourselves.
1
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It s really important to think about.
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The thing you mentioned about regulators that has been, this is me speaking, frustrating, is like you said, they follow technology.
1
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So sometimes they don t get the technology at all.
1
SPEAKER_01
So they re very clumsy in writing laws that censor that technology in interesting ways.
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SPEAKER_01
They mean good, but they can do a lot of unintended damage.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now, both, it s a dance.
1
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It s a beautiful dance, but I just wish governments were better dance partners.
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SPEAKER_01
I just see what they re kind of writing now about regulating social media and platforms like YouTube, and it s just really, really clumsy.
1
SPEAKER_01
They don t understand how machine learning works, how recommender systems work, and I just wish they kind of caught up a little more, because it s really important to be great at regulation, but also it s important to let companies flourish and embrace this new wave of technology.
1
SPEAKER_01
That weird dance,
1
SPEAKER_01
I am more and more learning, looking at public policy, how much positive government can do and how much clumsy negative it can do, unintentionally, just out of sheer incompetence or lack of curiosity about tech.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s my rant about regulators.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think it s a valid point.
1
SPEAKER_00
As I said before, I think the Europeans probably have a very good framework, but the way I ll think about it, we depend on have the ability to innovate, we depend on the free markets, we depend on the ability to create technology that will be disruptive.
1
SPEAKER_00
But at the same time, I think the tech companies probably should spend time helping governments understand, helping understand ahead of time so that they can be better prepared.
1
SPEAKER_01
Let s talk about one of my favorite topics, Snapdragon.
1
SPEAKER_01
So Snapdragon is a system on a chip.
1
SPEAKER_01
This processor has probably powered billions of smartphones over its pretty long history now, a decade and a half maybe.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it s constantly iterating, there s constantly just like a turmoil of beautiful innovations happening.
1
SPEAKER_01
So last year it was Snapdragon 888 was the main one with the five nanometer, and this year it s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s a new naming scheme.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay, what s the sexiest, most beautiful idea or concept to you about Snapdragon?
1
SPEAKER_01
Let s start there.
1
SPEAKER_00
The way I would describe it, and I think the reason we have been successful with it,
1
SPEAKER_00
is to really understand how to build a platform, a single chip, like a single chip, that will have every single capability if you wanna make this smartphone in the palm of your hand, something that has all of your computing needs.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it was the ability to get, from an engineering standpoint, ability to get into a single chip,
1
SPEAKER_00
of not only all possible connectivity technology from cellular to Wi-Fi, to Bluetooth, to every single constellation of satellites for position location.
1
SPEAKER_00
But at the same time, you know, a very power efficient, you know, single-threaded, multi-threaded CPU.
1
SPEAKER_00
A GPU for all of your graphic demands, gaming, fastest growing segment for gaming is mobile gaming.
1
SPEAKER_00
an artificial intelligence processor, which we call the neural processor unit, and then a video engine, a multimedia engine for every single application, audio, everything.
1
SPEAKER_00
So it s a single chip that has every single computing technology you need in the phone.
1
SPEAKER_00
And what s exciting about it is what we already knew.
1
SPEAKER_00
For example, when you think about camera or computer vision,
1
SPEAKER_00
you see that advancements in this technology now happens in the smartphone first versus additional cameras.
1
SPEAKER_00
So the beauty about the Snapdragon is we always have this thing within Qualcomm.
1
SPEAKER_00
The phone, it s small, you have to be able to hold it, you re gonna touch your face, so you cannot be hot.
1
SPEAKER_00
You have to manage thermals, you expect
1
SPEAKER_00
to have a full day of battery life.
1
SPEAKER_00
But then you want it to not be sending data into 10 or 100 megabits.
1
SPEAKER_00
You want gigabits.
1
SPEAKER_00
You want it to be able to have eight core processors.
1
SPEAKER_00
You want to have a GPU with ray tracing.
1
SPEAKER_00
You want to have all of those things that you can only get
1
SPEAKER_00
into sometimes a desktop PC.
1
SPEAKER_00
And to do all of that in your phone and to be able to be in the leadership position generation after generation is an incredible thing and we re very proud of that at Qualcomm.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so you have to do the Wi-Fi, 5G, all of the... And you have to be good to everyone of those technologies.
1
SPEAKER_01
And pack it all in.
1
SPEAKER_01
And there s also pressure to make the thing faster and faster and faster.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then there s more and more applications you re supposed to be effortlessly using.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then you mentioned the NPU, GPU, CPU, they have to also dance together somehow.
1
SPEAKER_01
They have to communicate well, share memory or not, depending on what the application is.
1
SPEAKER_00
And your battery has to last all day.
1
SPEAKER_00
So think about that, from a company like Qualcomm, we have to be good in each and every one of those technologies.
1
SPEAKER_00
We can t just say, oh, we re a CPU company, or a GPU company, or we re AI company.
1
SPEAKER_00
We have to do everything.
1
SPEAKER_01
What does it take to design a great processor?
1
SPEAKER_01
So design this system on a chip that you mentioned.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is there some insight you can provide in this chaos of engineers, designers, leaders, the people that think about how much this is all gonna cost, the whole mess of it?
1
SPEAKER_00
I m, of course, very partial about it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ve been in this company for probably more than 26 years, but I will argue that there are a couple of things that are ingredients for success.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we talk about the fact that we have all those different technologies, they evolve at their own pace, and you have to be good in each one of them, and you need them to make them work together.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you need to have an engineering organization that s with an incredible collaboration culture, because everybody has to be working.
1
SPEAKER_00
The train is going to leave the station, every cart needs to be there, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
When it leaves the station, it needs to leave on time, especially in the phone business, you can t change
1
SPEAKER_00
Christmas, you cannot change Black Friday.
1
SPEAKER_00
You cannot change all of the selling seasons.
1
SPEAKER_00
So the phones are gonna launch on time and every technology needs to be there.
1
SPEAKER_00
The engineering needs to work as one.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we do have that at Qualcomm.
1
SPEAKER_00
The other thing, you have to have incredible discipline because those are very complex systems.
1
SPEAKER_00
So in one way, you have to design with quality.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because in many cases, we re gonna be ramping production, and even before we have the silicon back, and you have to rely on our simulation models, and you have to rely on the fact that you design for commercial applications.
1
SPEAKER_00
That takes a while to build, and you know, it s probably been the,
1
SPEAKER_00
history of a semiconductor business at Qualcomm.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you mean like the framework of how many people can use simulation software and all that kind of stuff to build the thing with a hard deadline that you might not even get back from like manufacturer before.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re not allowed to have any mistakes.
1
SPEAKER_00
No wonder our name is quality communications.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I never even thought about the qual part, quality.
1
SPEAKER_01
So quality and there s a bar that s high and you re not allowed to mess up.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, to me, as an engineer, that s exciting.
1
SPEAKER_01
Hard deadlines, no room for mistakes.
1
SPEAKER_01
I love it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Super stressful, but I love it.
1
SPEAKER_01
So there s a couple of other small companies called Google and Apple.
1
SPEAKER_01
So Google is now using its own chip for the Pixel 6.
1
SPEAKER_01
Apple using as its own.
1
SPEAKER_01
How does Qualcomm outcompete Google?
1
SPEAKER_01
and Apple, how does it beat them?
1
SPEAKER_00
We don t have to out-compete Google.
1
SPEAKER_00
Actually, if you look at our mobile strategy today, and one thing I was very clear when I became CEO, I think there s a lot of confusion in the market, our mobile strategy is very clear.
1
SPEAKER_00
We are focused on making Snapdragon synonymous with premium Android experience.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s what Snapdragon is.
1
SPEAKER_00
Android, the phone of the people.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
I just have a love for Android.
1
SPEAKER_01
No, I m constantly talking trash to iPhone people.
1
SPEAKER_01
Sorry, go ahead.
1
SPEAKER_00
Premium Android experiences.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we do, we do produce Snapdragon in multiple tier for every price point, but you know, every year you mentioned the HN1 and every year we ll provide, you know, the flagship product and then,
1
SPEAKER_00
And then the other series that is trying to get the best of every possible technology at that time.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it s really focused on enabling the Android ecosystem.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I ll give an example.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you asked me the question, how to compete with Google.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s not about competing with Google.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re the number one enabler.
1
SPEAKER_00
off the google android ecosystem and the largest largest number one customer there is actually samsung and if you look what happened to samsung samsung i always had.
1
SPEAKER_00
Since I began my relationship with them, because they always had their own chip.
1
SPEAKER_00
They always had their own chip.
1
SPEAKER_00
And if you ll just look at what happened right now with the Galaxy S22 that just launched.
1
SPEAKER_00
They used to balance their business about 50% Qualcomm.
1
SPEAKER_00
They will get the most advanced markets like the United States and China and Japan and Korea.
2
SPEAKER_01
they will sign a Qualcomm and then they have their own chip for the markets that they would be like more emerging markets, open markets, markets that they have a control on the channel because they sell a lot of appliances and other things.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you look what happened right now, GS22, 75%
2
SPEAKER_01
is Qualcomm.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then the next large OEMs in Android ecosystem are the Chinese ones.
2
SPEAKER_01
Companies like Xiaomi, one of the fastest growing, it was number one in Europe at some point last year, then followed by OPPO and OnePlus and Vivo.
2
SPEAKER_01
So those are some of the largest Qualcomm customers.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they actually drive
2
SPEAKER_01
the Android ecosystem.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s our mobile strategy and fully aligned with Google.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s working.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I was, you know, not to get into a lot of the investor conversation, but we re also happy we became
2
SPEAKER_01
in a beneficiary of the shifts that we saw in the marketplace.
2
SPEAKER_01
As Huawei became a smaller OEM as a result of the sanctions, we saw the rise of a lot of the other OEMs from China, especially for China domestic market, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, they moved to the premium category and they re all doing that with Qualcomm.
2
SPEAKER_01
So we re actually very fortunate and happy with the position we are in mobile business.
2
SPEAKER_01
We do have an Apple relationship.
2
SPEAKER_01
We provide modem technology to Apple.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a multi-year relationship.
2
SPEAKER_01
Apple has been very public that they are investing to develop their own modem.
2
SPEAKER_01
But the Qualcomm strategy has been clear.
2
SPEAKER_01
We really focus on Snapdragon.
2
SPEAKER_01
Our mobile strategy is not defined by providing a cellular modem to Apple.
2
SPEAKER_01
Our mobile strategy is this that we just talked about it.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s about the unique thing of Snapdragon that has every single technology integrated into a single SoC.
2
SPEAKER_00
It provides a premium experience.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s what we re doing and focusing on the Android ecosystem.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if I can ask you this kind of question.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s like picking your favorite children or something like this, but what smartphone with a Snapdragon, you mentioned Samsung Galaxy S22, OnePlus, those are phones I personally really enjoy.
2
SPEAKER_00
What phone do you currently use?
2
SPEAKER_00
Or do you have multiple phones and you just?
2
SPEAKER_01
I do have multiple phones, but I do use a Galaxy S22.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s your favorite one?
2
SPEAKER_00
All right, well you heard it here first, folks.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so excellent.
2
SPEAKER_00
Can Qualcomm also, let s take a brief step away from mobile and take on Intel and Apple and other such companies in the laptop and desktop space?
2
SPEAKER_00
So the nature of what a computer is seems to be changing.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s like smartphones merging.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s all being a smartphone just with a bigger screen or something like this.
2
SPEAKER_00
So what does the future of that look like?
2
SPEAKER_01
Before I answer that question, let me just step back a little bit because, and I m sure we can talk more about those things, but the reality is Qualcomm is changing a lot.
2
SPEAKER_01
And we use, I know we spend a lot of time talking about 5G and smartphone and Snapdragon.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I think that has been what had defined Qualcomm for many years, but the reality is even consistent with that 5G conversation, which is a technology to connect everything, Qualcomm is also changing.
2
SPEAKER_01
Our technology that was in many cases designed for phones, and we said it in the beginning, connectivity and processing, is going to virtually every industry.
2
SPEAKER_01
And as a result, Qualcomm,
2
SPEAKER_01
is really changing with it and expanding to a number of different addressable markets.
2
SPEAKER_01
Some of those markets is the PC, as you talk about it, the conversions of mobile and PC.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the reason I m excited about this, because you see a lot of things happening that bring this right front and center when you think about the future of technology.
2
SPEAKER_01
So what we learn with the pandemic,
2
SPEAKER_01
is that the number one use case of personal computers is communications.
2
SPEAKER_01
It is interesting when you think about that.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s the number one use case on a PC today is communications.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s actually funny because in the cellular industry, actually I ll say, let me step back.
2
SPEAKER_01
In the telecom industry,
2
SPEAKER_01
We ve been chasing this killer application of video telephony for decades, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
I remember back then in the wireline, even before the internet and IP, ISDN, you remember those AT&T desk phones with a little screen, and they said, you can do video telephony.
2
SPEAKER_01
We don t watch that in Back to the Future 2.
2
SPEAKER_01
Then when we started developing 3G, people said, what s the application for having data to cell phone or video telephony?
2
SPEAKER_01
Then we started doing 4G, and in the beginning, people said, well, why do you need all this broadband, all video telephony?
2
SPEAKER_01
But it took a pandemic to make video telephony the killer application, and that s now the number one use case on a PC.
2
SPEAKER_01
So now think about that for a second.
2
SPEAKER_01
Personal computers now, they re technologies that people, when they were gonna buy a PC, they didn t care much about, and now they do.
2
SPEAKER_01
Camera.
2
SPEAKER_01
Camera, how good is the camera?
2
SPEAKER_01
The audio, is that connected?
2
SPEAKER_01
How good is the connectivity?
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you have the latest and greatest Wi-Fi and cellular?
2
SPEAKER_01
What s the battery life?
2
SPEAKER_01
Because you re gonna be working from anywhere.
2
SPEAKER_01
Sometimes you re near death, sometimes you re not.
2
SPEAKER_01
So all those things, what s the portability like?
2
SPEAKER_01
So those things started to change how we should think about the PC, but I won t stop there.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let me talk about another trend.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, and all come as a result of what we saw the pandemic.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let s say that you are an engineer, you do computer-aided design, you have an advanced desktop computer or workstation in your office, but you want to work from home someday, so you re not going to move that to your home.
2
SPEAKER_01
So what do you need to do?
2
SPEAKER_01
You re going to have to rely on that
2
SPEAKER_01
you re gonna run that on the cloud.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you re gonna run it on the cloud, you need high bandwidth because you almost want the cloud to be the same as your computer for that use case.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s the 5G on-demand computing use case.
2
SPEAKER_01
The use 5G is almost a link between two computers.
2
SPEAKER_01
But then, you know, CIOs are saying, well, my workforce is going home for certain days.
2
SPEAKER_01
I want all the data to be in the cloud.
2
SPEAKER_01
You look at, for example, Microsoft OneDrive, or the ability to collaborate, you need the bandwidth.
2
SPEAKER_01
So when you put all of those things together, you start thinking about what is the next generation PC?
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s the opportunity for Qualcomm.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ll just give an example.
2
SPEAKER_01
Back in Mobile World Congress recently, Lenovo,
2
SPEAKER_01
They have a line of enterprise laptops called the ThinkPad.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m sure you re familiar with it.
2
SPEAKER_01
So they announced the ThinkPad based on Snapdragon.
2
SPEAKER_01
with 5G on, 28 hours of battery life.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that s next generation.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s just a nice screen with extremely high, nice screen and keyboard, and extremely high connectivity to maybe an even more, like a more powerful machine in the cloud.
2
SPEAKER_00
Something more of the data, connecting to the data, connecting to compute, all that kind of stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
You have the camera capabilities.
2
SPEAKER_01
And let me go one step more.
2
SPEAKER_01
Microsoft talking about some of the features they re doing now using
2
SPEAKER_01
on windows 11 using snapdragon remember we talk about a snapdragon has an ai processor inside there so one of the cool features microsoft s talking about it is you can be on a team s call and you can make sure your eyes are looking at the camera uh
2
SPEAKER_01
100% of the time.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s an interesting, so they can be talking about that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you do that with AI.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes, that s really tricky to pull off.
2
SPEAKER_00
For example, the reason I m a huge stickler for doing these in person, these conversations in person, it s really tough to get right, but it s a worthy challenge.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that s where the metaverse hopes to, so like, I just, because you said the importance of this telephony, of humans connecting, teleporting themselves,
2
SPEAKER_00
Getting that right is really difficult.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of people hate Zoom meetings, but that doesn t mean you can t improve that experience and get rid of the hate.
2
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people hate talking to their car too because the voice, the natural language processing is terrible, but when it s not, it s a beautiful thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
So getting that right is
2
SPEAKER_01
this is an opportunity, this is an opportunity.
2
SPEAKER_01
Think about it, it starts with the PC making the PC giving you a better experience for Teams, but then it goes right back into this trend of connecting physical and digital spaces and all the work we re doing with the metaverse and virtual reality and meta-reality in the future is why not call somebody or connect with somebody with a hologram?
2
SPEAKER_01
It s possible.
2
SPEAKER_00
And also to mention some increasing amount of intelligence in our cars.
2
SPEAKER_00
So semi-autonomous, autonomous cars and the interactivity between human and car, which for me, things are really exciting.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let me ask you a big question.
2
SPEAKER_00
So when aliens again, now on the other side, right, and humans destroy themselves through nuclear war centuries from now.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s hope not.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s hope not.
2
SPEAKER_00
But in case, you know, let s just hypothetical thought experiment.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they write a history of humanity in the 21st century.
2
SPEAKER_00
What would they remember Qualcomm in the 21st century as a company?
2
SPEAKER_00
Would it be a car company?
2
SPEAKER_00
Think of all the crazy pivots that might happen in the next 50 years.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because you re thinking, you said Qualcomm enables all of these things.
2
SPEAKER_00
With 5G, and there ll be probably other Gs, it keeps increasing.
2
SPEAKER_00
So basically connectivity and computation and everything becomes connected and everything is capable of computation.
2
SPEAKER_00
might you become a robotics and car company?
2
SPEAKER_01
I will argue we re already an automotive company today, but let me tell you what I would like Qualcomm to be remembered and recognized for.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think everyone that knows Qualcomm immediately connect us, pun intended, to connectivity and wireless.
2
SPEAKER_01
But the reality is we ve been actually the company providing intelligence and processing to everything on the edge, everything outside the data center.
2
SPEAKER_01
that we re doing, those billions of devices that are gonna be connected.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s kind of explained when we talk about the connected intelligent edge, the beyond phones, cars, PCs, and all of those, and the broader IoT as we talk about it, everything will be connected and intelligent.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s what we want Qualcomm to be recognized for.
2
SPEAKER_00
So, by the way, for people who are not familiar, there s some technical jargon, but people use the word edge, like edge computing,
2
SPEAKER_00
It s, by the way, that s probably changing what that even means, but it s basically everything that s not a giant thing that s make a lot of noise in a building somewhere.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s mobile devices and the mobile devices of all kinds, well, a refrigerator is not mobile, but it would be edge.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s like, what s a sandwich?
2
SPEAKER_00
That kind of discussion.
2
SPEAKER_00
But basically edge computing.
2
SPEAKER_00
is the edge of that expanding space that you mentioned, that Qualcomm is trying to connect and enable with computation.
2
SPEAKER_01
Here s a simple way to describe what the edge is and edge computing is.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think as we think about the evolution of the data center, you need to bring the computational closer to where the device is.
2
SPEAKER_01
Also, when you put the computation together with the connectivity at the same time,
2
SPEAKER_01
you re gonna see a lot of advancement of artificial intelligence happening closer or at the device.
2
SPEAKER_01
Look, it s a very, I have a simple way to describe it.
2
SPEAKER_01
Remember in the beginning of this conversation, we talk about in the 4G era, broadband and mobile computing evolved side by side.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you re gonna have broadband, you might as well have a computer in the palm of your hand.
2
SPEAKER_01
So we needed to invest in those two technologies.
2
SPEAKER_01
In 5G, AI develops side by side.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re connected to the cloud 100% of the time.
2
SPEAKER_01
You have a high bandwidth, and you have now a smart and intelligent thing that can make decisions in real time, provide context information to the cloud to make the models more accurate, and as well, compare and contrast with the cloud.
2
SPEAKER_01
So there s going to be an exponential development of AI happening with
2
SPEAKER_01
all the edge devices, the devices that are outside the data center, and computation is going to go alongside that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And a great example, that s the car.
2
SPEAKER_01
The car, you know, we haven t talked much about the car, but, you know, Qualcomm is now, you could argue, was as much as an automotive company as a wireless company, working 26 global brands.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s easy to see
2
SPEAKER_01
If you look at our mobile heritage and we talk about form factors, thermal, battery life, you re not going to put a server in the trunk of a car, but you need as much computational capabilities.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s we see Qualcomm providing, you know, as the car become a connected computer on wheels, we provide the computational and all the sensors for you to do assistive driving for the new digital cockpit experience, connecting the car to the cloud.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s all of that s happening at the end.
2
SPEAKER_00
Does Qualcomm want to be the brain of a lot of autonomous vehicles in the future of different, you said brands, like Mercedes-Benz, I don t know, whatever, just whatever car, you know, cars have the sexy thing they do and then it defines their brand and so on.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then there s the brain that doesn t need to have branding supposedly.
2
SPEAKER_00
So does Qualcomm see that, or will I be able to buy a Qualcomm car?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like literally, it ll be Qualcomm.
2
SPEAKER_01
No, you re not gonna be able to buy a Qualcomm car, but we re ready on our way to become the brains of the car.
2
SPEAKER_01
The way you should think about Qualcomm automotive strategy is,
2
SPEAKER_01
The car companies realize they need to become technology companies.
2
SPEAKER_01
You just look, for example, of the market cap of some of the new electrical commerce and compare them with the legacy car companies.
2
SPEAKER_00
Which one is that?
2
SPEAKER_00
I heard of... Well, let s just use an example.
2
SPEAKER_00
One of them lives in Austin.
2
SPEAKER_01
let s say Rivian, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Rivian.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that one too, yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, the car companies are not going away.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s actually a mistake not to bet in the car companies.
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SPEAKER_01
The car companies need a technology partner that will provide the digital chassis for them.
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And that s what we re doing.
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So if you look at Qualcomm, we talk about a Snapdragon digital chassis.
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So we want to be the preferred technology partner of
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the car companies, and I think it s working.
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The strategy is working right now.
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So basically helping the car companies accelerate into becoming technology companies.
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Connecting the car to the cloud, redesign the interior of the digital cockpit experience, and provide the computation and sensor capabilities for autonomy and assisted driving.
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On the topic of robots, when millions or billions of robots roam the earth in the future, among us humans,
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And I m, for one, concerned in a small percentage, but largely I m excited about that future.
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Will Qualcomm be the thing that powers their brain?
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We have in our IoT business, which has been one of the fastest growing business for us, a number of robotics engagement.
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So I ll give you some example.
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And if you look of the Amazon Astro, you familiar with that?
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There s two, there s two Snapdragon in there.
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You know?
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There is, this is really exciting.
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They re supposed to ship it to me, where is it?
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Okay, but anyway, that s really cool.
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I didn t know it was Snapdragons.
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Yeah, we working with robotics in industrial, of course drones, you know, we re getting more and more traction for robotics.
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Sorry to interrupt, industrial robotics too, you said?
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Industrial.
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especially when you think about what s gonna happen with the factory of the future, the industrial side of the future, the warehouse of the future, when you bring 5G, for example, to it, and you have a number of different use cases, and then you see a lot of robotics application.
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And of course, drones.
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And the most famous, I will consider that a robot, the most famous robot in the world right now, it s powered by Snapdragon, which is the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter.
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The whole helicopter, the cameras and everything, is powered by Snapdragon.
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And talking about an exciting thing for an engineer,
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The same snapdragon that goes to a phone and it can go to a galaxy phone for example Samsung the same not a special one Went all the way to Mars Is exploring other planets looking for alien life and maybe gets to meet him wouldn t that be interesting if a snapdragon is the thing that first
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seen as an alien, it s like, what the hell?
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We did not program this in the computer vision.
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I want to use the example to go back to the conversation we had about quality.
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As an engineer, you need to make sure it works.
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Can you imagine if it gets over there on Mars and it doesn t work?
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Listen, this is very stressful.
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What NASA, what SpaceX, what all those companies are doing is extremely stressful.
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The room for mistakes is tiny, but that s super exciting for an engineer, once again.
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there s been a global semiconductor chip shortage.
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So from your perspective, just it d be interesting to get your expert analysis of the situation.
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What do you think are the main reasons and how is Qualcomm being affected and how can it help?
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In this, in the future, things like it.
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Okay, that s a...
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a big topic of conversation.
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And we only have five minutes.
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So I ll try to be as objective as I can.
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So first, let s talk about what caused it.
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And you hear a lot of different things.
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I will try to put it within the right context.
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The first thing that caused it, really,
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is the acceleration of digital transformation of pretty much everything in every industry.
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Every industry has been digitally transformed, and as such, the amount of semiconductors that are required is much larger.
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Just to give you a practical example, if you think about the automotive as an example,
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There s cars that are launch, a new model launching today.
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The new model launching today most likely has 10X the amount of chips of the prior model.
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And the amount of these people working on this coming in next, probably 10X that one.
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So you see the amount of silicon and then billions of things become smart.
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More and more data goes to the cloud, the data center grows.
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So the floor for semiconductor consumptions went up by a lot.
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Then you have things that aggravated this.
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The pandemic aggravated this.
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There s a couple of trends from the pandemic.
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The enterprise transformation of the home.
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The home became an enterprise.
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Massive amounts of upgrades on broadband and IoT.
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The office has changed to the way we work now, including the ability to support collaboration tools and video.
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Then you have the higher demand for products during the pandemic because people wanted to be connected.
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People bought new phones and new tablets and new computers, new gaming.
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So all of those things came on top of that as
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that aggravated the issue, but they re not the main issue.
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The main issue is it s actually a long-term growth of digital.
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So what I m hearing you say is the pandemic was not the cause, it was an aggravation.
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It was an aggravation.
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So is there a way
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we can support as a human civilization in terms of manufacture, in terms of supply, the kind of growth that you re talking about in devices and so on.
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Is there high level ideas you can say of what that s required there?
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Yes.
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And I think that s the second part of the answer.
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So what s happening now?
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How are we going to get out of this?
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So,
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We see a lot of capacity investments put into place by the industry.
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We had invested a lot with our suppliers.
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A lot of the suppliers had made plans about increasing the capacity.
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The industry is planning to double its total semiconductor manufacturing capacity.
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within the next five years, an example.
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So that s already happening.
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And then you see things which are actually good.
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They re good.
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The initiative such as the United States CHIPS Act, and now the European CHIPS Act.
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The United States CHIPS Act is about $52 billion, the Europeans about 43.
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Their goal combined is to get at least 50% of the consumption with manufacturing installed within the US and European geographies.
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And that s also very good.
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That s yet another incentive for more manufacturing capacity to be built and to be built with a geographic distributed way, which that s how you plan supply chain.
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So those I think are good things.
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So if anything we learn through the crisis,
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Is the semiconductor, it s important.
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Semiconductor companies are important and we need to invest in semiconductors.
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Returning to the grilling of the CEO with the hard questions.
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This is almost from my own education of the space.
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You mentioned regulators.
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Qualcomm paid out and received payment of billions of dollars in settlement and fines.
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There seems to be a lot of huge lawsuits in this space.
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How do you explain that?
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Does this get in the way of innovation or does it promote it?
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I will rephrase it by saying there used to be a lot of lawsuits in this space.
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In addition of what we do in semiconductors, our processors and our modems, the Snapdragon platform,
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We also have a licensing business, which has been a part of the company since the beginning.
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As the largest inventors of the essential technology in 2G, CDMA, 3G, 4G, and 5G, you know, and Qualcomm contribute that to the standards.
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So we always had this model that rather than invent the technology and be the only one producing the products, we license so everyone can produce it.
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And as such, we receive intellectual property for the standard essential patents.
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As part of our past dispute with Apple, that s behind us now.
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You re friends now.
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They re my customers.
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And as part of that, I think the licensing model got tested in, I think, in every geography.
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And we succeeded in every single geography to validate the pro-competitiveness of this model.
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I think the fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory aspect of this model.
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And I would argue that besides being the most successful licensing business to date in the industry, probably the one that s been battle tested and is most stable because there s not a single jurisdiction that we have not
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to validate that model.
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So it s part of our past and what it creates is probably create a lot of stability in our licensing business.
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But having said that, the growth of the company is in the semiconductor space.
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And the semiconductor, so licensing is you come up with a pretty good idea, you have a bunch of smart people coming up with cool ideas, and then once you come up with that idea, you sell that idea to others, they get to use it.
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That s essentially what a license is.
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The license revenue we have is for what we call the SCP, Standard Essential Patents, that are part of the 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G standards.
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So if you want to build anything with 5G,
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you need to get a license from Qualcomm because it uses Qualcomm essential technology as part of the standard.
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And a slightly different model, or a lot different model with the semiconductor is you design, you inject a bunch of fascinating ideas, how to build the Snapdragon, and then there s, because it s a fabulous company, you have somebody build the chip, and it goes into a phone with the branding and all that kind of stuff, and that has less kind of,
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players involved, it s not a license.
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We sell the product.
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We don t license semiconductor technology, we build products and we sell products.
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This is your first year as a CEO.
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Not one year yet.
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Not one year yet.
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It ll be in June, it ll be one year.
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This is a company that s involved with a lot of fascinating technologies and it s touching the lives of billions of people.
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A lot of complicated stuff, like I said, licensing technologies, you have to collaborate with manufacturers, you have to then work with however many, you said, car companies and all these clients and so on, and you have to, you know, with tech companies, Apple and so on,
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What s that like?
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What lessons have you learned about leadership and maybe about yourself as a human being from this first almost a year, soon to be a year as a CEO of this incredible, this complex, this large company?
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No, that s a loaded question.
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Let me answer in reverse order.
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First thing that I learned, and I think it s probably common,
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across CEOs, especially in our industry, is it will be great if I had more time.
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I think there s, especially because we grow in so many areas and there s so many things to learn, so many relationships to build, time to spend with a number of different technologies, and
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But it kind of reflects really the size of the opportunity that exists for Qualcomm.
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Qualcomm, it is really growing in a number of different directions all at the same time.
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And so it did got busier.
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And part of this is because I m spending a lot of time understanding the new industries we re going in and building relationships.
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Second thing, which is a lot to do with how I think about things,
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and a little bit of my personality.
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At the end of the day, business partnership is really done by people.
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And I think the importance of having trusted relationships for the long term is extremely important.
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And I ve been dedicated to do that as CEO.
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We re not a company that plays for the short term.
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We don t.
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And when we build new partnerships, we expect that to be for decades.
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And so I spend time doing that and think that s important for Qualcomm.
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The other part of
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Your question is, we do have a lot of opportunities in all different areas.
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What we like, and I ve been fortunate enough to become CEO at a time that a lot of the trends are pointing toward technology.
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We talk about some of them.
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We talk about merger of physical and digital spaces.
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We talk about the transformation of the automobile.
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We talk about the merge of computing.
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and mobile, the enterprise transformation of the home, there are many of those trends.
3
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And those trends create opportunities for Qualcomm to be providing technology first.
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And as such, we re in a hurry.
3
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So I m in a little bit of a hurry because I think the opportunity is incredible for technology, but having fun and enjoying the job.
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Is there a burden because of so much what you said is partnerships and, you know, almost like friendships, connections with other human beings.
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Me as an introvert that has a lot of social anxiety, that seems extremely stressful.
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SPEAKER_01
So is there that burden on your shoulders?
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You have to wake up every day and talk to friends you ve had for many years.
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It can be, you know, and then convince them and make partnerships with them.
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talk with them, describe to them the future, sell them an idea, and then yourself grow, because you don t know what the heck the future s gonna be like, and you have to project both confidence and humility, all those kinds of things.
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Is that exhausting?
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It is exhausting, but it s something I do like to do, and it s not only with partners, really, it s also internally to your employees, I think.
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to get alignment on the vision and faith in the vision and execute.
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And at the end of the day, we re very fortunate.
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We have a lot of smart people.
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So people, if they re aligned with the vision, they know what to do.
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SPEAKER_00
And then of course, as CEO, you have to convince your investors that that s the right idea as well.
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If you can put on your wise sage hat, do you have advice for young people in high school and college?
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You, yourself, started from the humble beginnings in Brazil, maybe a bit of a wild, risky decision to go to Japan, and now are the head of one of the biggest, most successful, most impactful companies in the world.
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SPEAKER_01
Given that story, can you give advice to young people today that,
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how they can have a career, or just the life they can be proud of?
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I think the first thing, and of course all of those answers are gonna relate to my own experience, right?
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The first thing is,
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It always worked for me to have a plan, even if the plan is just what I m gonna do in the next two years, but what do I want to do?
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Where do I wanna go?
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And I think it s important for people, especially young people,
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is to really have a dream and go pursue it.
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I mean, have dreams, not go back to bed to sleep.
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It s really what do you want to accomplish and then what it s gonna take to do that.
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And then believe in yourself.
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Like I said, I joined Qualcomm as an engineer.
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I didn t have any plans when I joined to be CEO, but I do want to, as an engineer, what do I want to do, where I want to contribute, what I want to work on, and then keep evolving from that point in time.
3
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The other thing is, this is an advice, it s more of like career advice that I got early in my career, was extremely helpful for me, and I will give that advice to everyone that is interested.
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Spend time understanding what are the things you re good at and what are things you re not?
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Like, what is that real border between your area of competence and your area of incompetence?
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And once you see that, once you see that, you know exactly what you have to work on and you can say, if that s where I want to go next, this is the gap I need to do it.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s faster when you can identify yourself before other people can tell you.
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SPEAKER_00
Then it leads to automatically the next step.
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Surround yourself, the people that are very good, the things that you re not.
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So you have to be radically honest about the things that you re not good at, but given what you re passionate about, you need to get good at, or you would like to get good at, and surround yourself by those people.
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How often did the plans you make actually work out?
3
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So you said it s important to make plans.
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You didn t say anything about it s important to execute on those plans.
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More than 50% success rate.
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SPEAKER_01
Try to keep it above 50.
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Try to keep it above 50.
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SPEAKER_01
What was the whole, why did you end up in Japan?
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SPEAKER_00
You know, I ve been fortunate enough to work in cellular and wireless my entire career.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I always liked communications.
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When I went to engineering school, my dad was an electrical engineer, but he worked with a utility company.
3
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He wanted to,
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me to graduate in traditional electrical engineering, like energy generation, distribution.
3
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But I like electronics communication, so I end up doing both.
3
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And I always like communication, was fascinated by wireless communication.
3
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So my first job out of college, I started working for a Japanese company down in Brazil.
3
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It was NEC.
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And within about a year in, they transferred me to Tokyo, asked me to go to the headquarters, and it was the first time I left Brazil.
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A little bit different from Brazil, culturally.
3
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Very different.
3
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It s in the other side of the planet.
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And that s how it started.
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You said your father s an electrical engineer.
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Do you think what you re doing now makes your father proud?
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SPEAKER_00
I think he s very proud.
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I think especially, you know, he tells me that, you know, I m still the same person, I never change.
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Does he give you advice?
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Does he criticize what you re doing?
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Tell you how to improve?
3
SPEAKER_00
My mom and dad still give me advice today, I m very fortunate for that.
3
SPEAKER_00
But he s proud, also proud because there are very few Brazilians that have achieved a position as CEO of a company the size of Qualcomm.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I do know that also I carry a burden, especially for the Latino community, to be an inspiration for them and make sure I set a good example.
3
SPEAKER_01
So not just your mom and dad, but the culture, the people that were originally your home.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you, you know, life is finite.
3
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Do you think about your own mortality?
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Look, I m a devout Christian.
4
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And so I m a big believer that there s, this is just a transition.
4
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But don t spend a lot of time thinking about that.
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I am somebody good, better, and different that try as much as possible to leave the present.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s what I do.
4
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and trying to make the present better on this place here on Earth.
4
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And that some of these technologies, some of these ideas are kind of a different kind of immortality as well, because they propagate through time and have impact on people in the best possible way.
4
SPEAKER_01
So technology can be scary, technology can be destructive, but it seems like in the end, it can do a lot of good.
4
SPEAKER_01
It gives people hope.
4
SPEAKER_01
What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing?
4
SPEAKER_01
I asked you about aliens observing us.
4
SPEAKER_01
What s the meaning of life?
4
SPEAKER_01
Cristiano, what s the meaning of life?
4
SPEAKER_01
Easy questions.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s not an easy question at all.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think that s a question, at least for me, you have to answer individually.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I do believe we re all here for a purpose.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, I,
4
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In my prayers, I always ask that I stay on track to whatever my purpose is, but I do believe we re here for a purpose and we need to do the best we can during the time we have on this earth.
4
SPEAKER_01
So that means create beautiful things for you as an engineer?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes, and create beautiful things, yes.
4
SPEAKER_01
What about love?
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What s the role of love in the human condition?
4
SPEAKER_00
Love s very important, and it s an essential part of being human.
4
SPEAKER_00
It comes in the package.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think if you look at the situation, what s happening right now, I think you look at the situation with some of the underprivileged communities, you look at the homeless situation, I think we all need more love.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and I think people that build incredible technology sometimes forget the love part.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like those are all, it s all integrated.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s no, thinking about humanity is really important when you build tools that empower that humanity.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because there s, I think, at least I personally believe we re all capable of both evil and good.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we have to build technology, build societies, build governments, build communities that inspire us to,
4
SPEAKER_01
to connect with the good part within all of us.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m a big believer that technology is, at the end, the force for good.
4
SPEAKER_00
And if you just look, you know, not trying to move away from a deep discussion to a more specific, technical one, but we started the conversation talking about smartphones.
4
SPEAKER_00
And smartphones really, the first time,
4
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that you could say that everybody in the world was able to connect to the internet and connect to each other.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think that empowerment that that provided, it s an incredible force for good.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, the company you lead, the technology you ve created, one of them that I m especially excited about, which is Snapdragon, the whole line of processors there, currently I would say at about 10 billion transistors.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you think about the human brain, it s about 100 billion neurons.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I think 11 Samsung Galaxy S22s are already smarter than me, and that s being nice to me.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m really honored that you spent your extremely valuable time with me, even though you said Pelé is the favorite player.
4
SPEAKER_01
Beyond all of that, I think you re an incredible person, an incredible leader, and you lead an incredible engineering company, so thank you for doing that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, thank you so much.
4
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for the kind words.
4
SPEAKER_00
Really a pleasure having this conversation.
4
SPEAKER_00
I really had a lot of fun doing it, and thank you for having me on the podcast.
4
SPEAKER_01
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Christiano Amon.
4
SPEAKER_01
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
4
SPEAKER_01
And now, let me leave you with some words from Stephen Hawking.
4
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For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals.
4
SPEAKER_01
Then something happened, which unleashed the power of our imagination.
4
SPEAKER_01
We learned to talk and we learned to listen.
4
SPEAKER_01
Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible.
4
SPEAKER_01
Mankind s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking.
4
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t have to be like this.
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SPEAKER_01
Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future.
4
SPEAKER_01
With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded.
4
SPEAKER_01
All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
4
SPEAKER_01
Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.