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Don Mcguire

Senior VP & Chief Marketing Officer, Qualcomm

Search every verified Don Mcguire interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Don McGuire, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Qualcomm, appeared on the Makna Talks podcast during a visit to Jakarta. He described the current period as the biggest technology inflection point since the smartphone, attributing that shift to artificial intelligence. McGuire said Qualcomm is one of the few companies with technology spanning devices from earbuds and rings to data center racks, and he discussed the company's marketing visibility, including its sponsorship deal with Manchester United. McGuire also addressed broader implications of AI, saying early assumptions that it would replace many workers have proven false. He argued that AI can support task management and improve critical thinking, work-life balance, and strategic planning, but cautioned against handing over entire workflows to the technology. He noted that 37 percent of the world remains unconnected and said AI could serve as a "great equalizer" if deployed properly, but warned that failing to address the digital divide would widen it further. He also speculated that technology would likely exist both terrestrially and beyond Earth in the future

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“We are one of the only companies, and I'm going to put this in terms of milliwatts and kilowatts, that can have technology that lives in something as small and tiny as an earbud or a ring that is really doing like 2 milliwatts or 2 kilowatts, whatever it is. And then we have solutions that range all the way up to 200, right? Which is a data center rack and everywhere in between. So from an earbud and a ring to a pair”

“I think historically some brands refused or were reluctant to share the spotlight with a partner um for fear of dilution. Of brand dilution. I think that's BS.”

“I would destroy the ability for AI to reach super intelligence. I don't think it's needed. I just don't think I think doing something just to do something I'm I'm going to reference Oppenheimer here for a second. doing something just to do something is very dangerous.”

“We did a horrible job up until this last earnings call... we looked at how we communicated to that that that audience not only what was important of what happened in that quarter but where we were headed. And and for the first time talked about sort of the new new the next new. And that signaled to the people who get on those calls every quarter and listen to what we have to say. uh something different, something's c”

“I think it's a combination of things. There's I think there's really two main vectors. I'm sure there's a lot of noise around each of these, but for for the first vector, I think I'll talk about the inability or the lack of understanding of technology that leads to regulation that um probably is not uh appropriate and or productive uh with regards to the advancement and innovation of technology.”

“We're sort of talking about AI and Agentic AI in the context of the compute continuum, and that goes from milliwatts all the way to kilowatts. It just so happens that we play across that entire continuum, from the smallest wearable device all the way through to a data center rack, and on the inference side. So where we're squarely entering the data center is on the inference side, which is becoming more and more impo”

Other executives at Qualcomm

  • Cristiano Amon, Chief Executive Officer, President & Director
  • Akash Palkhiwala, Chief Financial Officer & Chief Operating Officer
  • Nakul Duggal, Executive Vice President and Group General Manager of Automotive, Industrial and Embedded IoT, and Robotics, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
  • Ziad Asghar, Vice President of Product Management of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →