Text / Tencent Digital Su Yang
About thirty years ago, this San Diego company labeled itself with IT. However, unlike other IT companies, Qualcomm did not follow the same path as Motorola, Ericsson and Nokia. Business.
From the outset, Qualcomm entered the wireless communications business. If it is said that for a decade, Qualcomm has spent 30 years on this growth path, and has finally achieved its dominance of wireless communications solutions.
Qualcomm's growth is almost accompanied by the mobile communication industry, especially in the 2G era to the 3G era and the transition from the feature phone to the smart phone era, the adoption of the Snapdragon processor solution has been widely used to directly push Qualcomm’s performance. To the top, this advantage has been extended to the 4G era, but at the peak also means that Qualcomm is approaching the bottleneck of business growth, Qualcomm is necessary to find a new growth point.
At this year's 4G/5G summit, the answer given by the San Diego people is 5G. On the product side, it is the X50 LTE baseband with an uplink peak rate of 5Gbps.
Direct downward compatibility with 4G
Companies including Qualcomm Nokia, Ericsson, etc. are all trying to develop new 5G communications technology. The veteran vendors are optimistic about the future of this technology. What will happen to 4G services when the 5G era arrives?
Qualcomm's answer is that the two are parallel or, more accurately, backward compatible with 4G.
Qualcomm executive vice president said that Christian C. Amon said, "In the future, Qualcomm's overall chip solution will include 5G modems, 4G modems and application processors (AP), etc. It is a multi-mode chipset. In these systems, 5G And 4G will work together."
This kind of collaboration is actually in the 2G to 3G era. The logic of the 3G to 4G era is basically the same. Where 4G is covered, it will be able to access 4G. If it is not covered, then it will access 3G.
"We predict that the early large-scale deployment of 5G will be in densely populated areas and will depend on 4G beyond its network coverage. Just as Qualcomm did when 3G and 4G networks evolved, we will also be at 4G and Do the same job on 5G," said Christian Ammon.
Talking about 5G now is not hype
At the next-generation mobile network industry conference held in Frankfurt, Germany, the Vodafone CTO also raised its own doubts that the entire industry is over-hype 5G.
Christiano Amon responded by saying: "There is no doubt that 5G does attract a lot of attention, but at the same time, it has made a lot of progress. As you can see today, the industry is also advancing the commercial use of 5G, our network equipment. Partners also keep the same pace with us."
Christiania Amon’s industry is promoting business. Nokia is a clear example. Nokia has also announced testing of 5G networks in the US market.
If we look at the time, now that X16-based Gigabit products have not yet been covered in large scale, the X50 solution will be launched at this time. People will always feel that they are trying to grab a starter, or that they are in a hurry, but Qualcomm does not seem to agree with this. view.
"In 2017, you will begin to see the flagship handsets will achieve Gigabit LTE download speeds through X16 LTE modems. In 2018 and beyond, you will see the application of 5Gbps products, and in the next few years, Gigabit speeds are likely to be as good as us. As expected, it has become a basic feature of LTE networks, said Christiano Amon.
625MB/s download speed is not trusted?
The peak download speed of 625MB per second is a pleasant surprise for people in the 5G era. But before this surprise comes, Qualcomm is still questioned. "The peak speed is all nonsense." This is not uncommon. .
For users, we can really enjoy the peak speed of the 5G era, and the coverage of network infrastructure has become the key to the key. However, from the perspective of the 3G and 4G era, the initial market feedback is not ideal until the middle and late period. The problem that the rate is lower than expected also continues to push down the user's trust.
What Qualcomm has to do is to work with operators and other partners to solve the problem of coverage and avoid the embarrassment of distrust.
Christiano Amon said, “We hope to deploy the 5G network and related technologies as soon as possible. It is expected that the first commercial products integrating the Xiaolong X50 5G modem will be launched in the first half of 2018.â€
In the Chinese market, Qualcomm stated that “Qualcomm will be able to begin testing and engineering development of 5G networks with the top three operators in China as early as 2017.â€
In addition, Chinese consumers have been paying close attention to traffic charges, especially related to the topic of “overnight XX houseâ€. This problem once caused operators to backfire, although the spearheads are not directly aligned as wireless communication solutions. Qualcomm business, but in the long run, Qualcomm also needs to participate in the solution to this problem, or else the final impact is still Qualcomm's 5G business.
Cloud storage becomes local storage
What can 5G users come to you? If the download speed of 625MB/s cannot be fully summarized, cloud storage is a good example of being transformed into local storage.
Based on the coverage of 5G networks, when users use the cloud service in the future, the experience is expected to be close to the current storage. Reading and writing a file from the cloud is just like using it locally, and it can even be extended to game products.
The game client currently installed locally by the user may be directly installed in the cloud in the future, and only one initiator for connecting to the service is required in the local area to achieve the concept of “wireless storageâ€.
In streaming media services, Caton will become a history and the buffer may disappear completely from the Internet.
According to Qualcomm, 5G products were officially commercialized in 2018. However, from past practice, mass consumers can experience this service in 2019. Even this time, Qualcomm pushes forward the promotion of 5G services. confidence.
"From the perspective of 3G and 4G networks, the new generation of cellular networks will be deployed faster than the previous generation network in terms of the number of covered population and cities. Every time it is like this," said Christian Romano. Speaking.
As for the other sensitive topic that consumers are concerned about - the price, Qualcomm has no direct answer. Under our suspicion, Christiano Amon only gave a broad answer, "will be listed on the 4G products. Prices are basically kept in sync."