A new milestone for Qualcomm Technologies has been reported by the company, while also providing some insight into the kinds of resources the SoC maker is putting towards the Internet of Things (IoT). The main focus of Qualcomm’s latest announcement is that the company now has its technology in approximately 1.5 billion IoT devices around the world, and is putting out just over one million of its related chipsets every day. That number is, of course, based on Qualcomm’s own internal shipment data so there is a little wiggle-room in terms of actual market impact but that is a lot of chips shipped regardless. With the IoT’s impact on the world economy currently estimated to hit around $11 trillion by 2025, Qualcomm appears to be positioning itself to maintain a lead in that area of technology, just as it has with its Snapdragon processors in the Android smartphone market.
The company references several different IoT devices in its report, outlining the diversity possible with its SoCs. On the smartwatch front, Qualcomm boasts inclusion in more than 150 wearables. Moreover, the company claims that more than “80 percent of launched or announced Android Wear” devices are built around the Snapdragon Wear 2100 chipset. With regards to the company’s chips being used in smart home devices, Qualcomm says that over 125 million connected devices, including TVs, have shipped with the chip maker’s connectivity hardware inside. Industry uses of its technologies aren’t left out of the report either, with more than 30 designs for commercial and industrial IoT use currently using its MDM9206 modem. Moving forward, Qualcomm plans to leverage its wide diversity of products – which range from mobile to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth SoCs – and their associated comprehensive APIs. Taking things further, the company points to its array of 25 “reference design platforms” which are built in partnership with device manufacturers for inclusion in “voice-enabled home assistants, connected cameras, drones, VR headsets, lighting, appliances and smart hubs/gateways.”
The technologies Qualcomm is currently focused on are, for the time being, at the very heart of the IoT tech revolution. The company has already shown a lot of prowess in its field and has become a de facto standard in the smartphone world, even drawing in some controversy over its standing. So there is no reason Qualcomm couldn’t use both its position in the smartphone market and the knowledge gained in getting there to good use to meet the company’s goal with regard to creating a more permanent leadership role for itself in the IoT market as well. This latest milestone is just one more step towards that goal.