According to the company’s official blog, Qualcomm is celebrating a decade of chipsets and communications technologies manufacture today. The company may have gotten its start creating modem technologies for trucking fleets back in 1985 but it has been creating Snapdragon chips since the release of its Snapdragon S1 in 2007. It’s first entry in an Android device – the HTC Dream – was in 2008 and by 2010 Qualcomm’s unit shipments surpassed 500 million. Between that first SoC and the current run of Snapdragon 835 chips found in modern flagships, the company has accomplished quite a lot – despite current sentiments about its licensing practices. That includes a number of industry firsts and world firsts, which Qualcomm has helpfully outlined in the infographic included below. Those accomplishments expanded the company from a modem manufacturer into arguably the most important company creating Android chipsets, in addition to its existence as a top components maker for everything from self-driving cars to smartwatches.
In 2009, the company introduced the world to the industry’s first dual carrier HSPA+ chipset, followed by the first dual-core Android processors in 2010. Between 2012 and 2013, the company made the world’s first Voice over Internet Protocol mobile call via LTE and moved past LTE to introduce the very first LTE-advanced-capable SoC in the industry – with the Snapdragon 800, which was capable of 150Mbps connections. Meanwhile, 2014 was a bumper year for the company, during which it introduced more world firsts with its 64-bit 3G LTE integrated chipset, LTE-A Cat 10 modem, LTE dual-SIM solution, Snapdragon 400 for Android Wear, and a Snapdragon-powered in-car infotainment solution. All of those accomplishments were further rounded out in 2016 when the company announced the first ever Gigabit Class LTE modem for mobile devices, paving the way for next-generation networking connections alongside the company’s showing off the first ever over-the-air-connection to be made via enhanced the LTE-U platform, MulteFire.
2017 has not, as of this writing, contained any world firsts. On the other hand, it has seen the company becoming heavily involved in nearly every portion of the chipset market and pressing, alongside partner companies, for the future of 5G connections, among other things. The company also revealed that it expects to expand again by early 2018 – this time into the Windows PC market in competition with Intel and AMD. There’s no telling what kinds of innovation the level of competitiveness Qualcomm brings to the table will be able to deliver on that front. However, the company appears more than ready to continue in the technology industry for the long-haul, with many more good things to come.
