Chinese Version中文版：高通和第六感
As part of ARM Wearables Week - 17 - 21 November 2014 - #ARMWearablesWK we (lorikate and me) spoke with Pankaj Kedia, Senior Director and Business Lead for the Wearables Segment at Qualcomm.
Qualcomm are excited about wearables for many reasons not least of which is because most people use one phone per person but everybody can have multiple wearables so it’s a huge market. How big a market? If we accept there will be 2 billion smartphones sold per year in in 2018 (ABI data) then simple math tells us that 2 or 3 times that is a very big number.
Pankaj and the folks at Qualcomm believe that over the next 3 to 5 years, sensors are going to become small enough to disappear on (and in) your body and battery life issues will have faded away to the point that sensors become ubiquitous and are that sixth sense in your life.
For Qualcomm the Internet of Everything (IoE, not IoT) is a major growth priority and they logically categorize IoE devices into those on the body (wearables), in the home, and out in the city. It’s a simplistic way to describe it, but smart body, smart home and smart city.
For wearables to be successful Pankaj says there are four challenges to address:
Luckily Qualcomm has the technology and expertise to address these issues. You may know that Qualcomm has been a driver of wireless charging standards with their WiPower initiative and as the price level falls it should be in widespread use. To reduce size and cost there is a never ending drive for integrating technology and Qualcomm has already done this with chips that have CPUs, GPU, sensor hub, GPS, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth and LTE in a single package; there is more to come. Additionally, Qualcomm recently announced the purchase of CSR to round out their connectivity portfolio, further supporting their drive for integration. Finally they believe that ease of use is key to adoption and are working with Google on the Android Wear OS to improve the user experience. All the trends and technologies are coming together to deliver the wearables we want by the billions over time.
Pankaj pointed out that Wearables are really a collection of devices, not one segment:
Qualcomm sees 5 segments of wearables:
Qualcomm invests heavily in research with consumers and enterprises to help them predict the future and particularly what wearables might look like in 3 to 5 years. Once the data comes in that a market is promising the Qualcomm chipsets and even end user products like the Toq watch come to market. So following that progression we see Qualcomm innovating with wireless charging (WiPower) and their recently released augmented reality SDK called Vuforia. If you want to understand the connected world we live in it might pay to follow @Pankajkedia and what’s emerging from @Qualcommlabs.