President of Qualcomm Technology Licensing (QTL) & Global Affairs, Qualcomm Inc
Over a Coffee with Alex Rogers, Executive Vice President of Qualcomm
Over A Coffee with Alex Rogers, Executive Vice President of Qualcomm, and President of Qualcomm Technology Licensing
A recent Accenture study on the impact of 5G in the European economy reports that 5G will drive up to €2.0 trillion in additional gross output (sales) growth; and it has the potential to create or transform up to 20 million jobs across all sectors of the economy – this which includes full-time, part-time and temporary jobs. The report expects 5G will add up to nearly €1.0 trillion to the European GDP, with multiplier effects
felt in every industry.
Speaking with EURACTIV’s Br...
About Alexander Rogers
Alex Rogers, President of Qualcomm Technology Licensing and Global Affairs, has spoken extensively about the role of 5G in driving digital transformation across industries, particularly in automotive, manufacturing, and healthcare. He has emphasized the importance of public-private partnerships and collaboration with policymakers to enable new 5G use cases, stating that "public-private partnerships are critical in order to enable new 5G use cases" and that "policymakers need to understand the technology." Rogers has also highlighted Qualcomm's commitment to partnering with European companies, noting that "Qualcomm is here to be a partner, enabling European companies" and that the company has "the assets — connectivity, compute, all the semiconductor assets that are necessary for success in that digital transformation." Rogers has defended Qualcomm's licensing model for standard-essential patents (SEPs), arguing that it supports a "virtuous cycle of continuing research and development." He has described challenges to SEP licensing as ongoing for over a decade, with many "essentially defeated but they continue to rise again and again." Rogers has advocated for industry-led solutions rather than regulation, stating "I don't think regulation is the answer — I think an industry solution is the proper answer." He has also warned against the "balkanization" of standards, saying that "if you have balkanized standards with different technological requirements in different markets, you're going to wind up having more complicated SKUs, interoperability testing and costs." Rogers has cited research projecting that 5G will enable $13.1 trillion in global economic impact by 2035 and create over 20 million jobs.
Transcript (19 segments)
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Interviewer0:11
Automotive technological revolution that's coming with 5G. What does it mean for consumers? What does it mean for Europe and strategic autonomy? And what does it mean for the automotive industry?
Alex Rogers, thanks for joining us today over coffee. I wish we could do this sitting in California somewhere, but that'll have to wait for a little bit. Look, today I wanted to talk about the future of 5G and automotive and what it really means to have automotive digital transformation. What does that mean to you and to Qualcomm?
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Alexander Rogers0:50
Well, first of all, Brian, thanks for having me. It's great to see you again. So let's talk about automotive and digital transformation. The transformation that's coming is enabled by connectivity. When you think about 5G and everything is connected to everything, the automobile is connected to other cars, infrastructure, pedestrians, bicyclists. There's going to be a transformation in the way people drive. It's going to enable more than is enabled now even with the most advanced safety features. So you'll have more efficiency and definitely more safety, and even significant cutbacks, even with internal combustion engines, you'll have significant cutbacks on CO2. Let me just give you an example. Right now, with an advanced car, you'll have safety features. Cars act now with most advanced technology, but in the future it'll be different. In the future, when you have connected vehicles, a car entering an intersection at a high rate of speed will understand that there's another car behind the building that can't be seen on cameras or with the human eye, and it's coming at the same intersection, and they'll be in communication, and the accident will be avoided because of radio communication, because of C-V2X. There'll be synchronized driving on highways, tremendous efficiency. There'll be ultra-precise positioning. Cars will know where they are on the roadway within centimeters. So there'll be a complete transformation in the automotive space in terms of how we experience transportation.
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Interviewer3:10
I think you know you expect the car to be producing something like eight gigabytes of data, which is about what 20 mobile phones in Western Europe at the moment as well. That's not an easy thing for us to produce at the moment. So do you expect a smooth rollout with these new capabilities?
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Alexander Rogers3:27
Well, first of all, the automotive space will be a power user of wireless data. And the rollout is actually happening faster than you think. There are efforts in Europe. We've got two billion that's being advanced towards infrastructure for 5G. You've got corridors that are being set up to test these capabilities. So there will be a transition. It'll take time. You'll see the EV coming along a little bit faster than you see this happening.
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Interviewer4:10
At this point in time, the massive amount of data that will be used to essentially make the automotive transportation experience more efficient will completely change your ability to do anything you want in a car, similar to what you have in a smartphone. That's going to change. And one of the things that's telling when you look at the future, you look at a company like Xiaomi. It's a handset company in China, one of the top three handset companies in the world right now. They're getting into the EV space. Why? Because it's going to merge with their expertise. They have connections with customers, and they're going to continue that connection from handset to automotive. It's going to completely change the way in which automotive does business. That brings with it other challenges. A big issue here in Europe and the automotive sector in terms of 5G as well is tech sovereignty. It's at the forefront of discussion. When you look at technologies that really matter, people are very focused on semiconductors right now because of the shortage. Everybody's feeling it. So competence in semiconductors is something that is an intense focus right now. Another area of competence is in mobile, in cellular communications. That infrastructure, that technology enables a level of competence that is extraordinarily valuable. 5G will enable well over 200 billion in additional GDP in Europe.
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Alexander Rogers6:10
You have Ericsson, you have Nokia. You have the ability not only to deploy, you have the ability to actually create the underlying technology that then leads into standards and then leads into deployment. So the innovation competence is already there. With the notion of tech sovereignty, there may be in Europe areas where you need to build confidence in order to have that sovereignty. But mobile is an area where you already have the competence. The key there is to keep it. The key is to ensure that it isn't damaged.
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Interviewer6:45
Does that give it a global competitive advantage to make Europe a powerhouse when it comes to 5G and for the next generation after 5G as well? Do you think Europe is well positioned to be able to advance quickly?
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Alexander Rogers7:10
What's happening in mobile now is that mobile is advancing into every industry. So there's a new field of opportunity. Even if the handset space is mature, there's a new field of opportunity in every other vertical that exists, including in manufacturing where Europe has strengths, including in automotive where Europe has strengths. You get into smart cities, you get into smart factories. Europe has strengths in all of these areas. The key is that you want to maintain your competence in the underlying innovation that's actually going to drive transformation in all of these areas. You want to be able to participate in the development of the roadmap from 5G to 6G. The continuing development of 5G in and of itself is enormous. So you want to maintain this confidence and then you want to deploy that competence in all of these other verticals.
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Interviewer8:12
That is extraordinary because it's not simply limited to handsets. A part of that strength has got to come with intellectual property ownership as well. If you talk about global standards in terms of previous technological shifts as well, how do we apply this in the cellular industry today? Do you see a change in how global standardization is working? And what role does China play in this? I spoke with somebody from ETSI, the global standards organization, a couple of weeks ago, and they were saying China are extremely cooperative and active when it comes to standards as well. How do you see Europe in terms of standards and this process?
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Alexander Rogers8:55
With mobile, Europe has actually been the development of standards and the IP policies associated with patents relating to those standards throughout the world. And that has been extraordinarily valuable. Look how mobile has advanced in ways far beyond what anybody imagined when we first had 2G and were moving into 3G. A big part of that is because of the organization around global and open standards and IP policies within mobile that make sense, governed by ETSI. We can't take that for granted. We have to actually continue to drive that policy that standards need to remain open. And those are out there. There are different countries around the world that are advocating for nationalized versions of cellular standards, which would actually start to balkanize standards and make essentially the worldwide market more difficult to participate in. That has to be resisted. We have to keep reminding ourselves that open global standards are very important.
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Interviewer10:29
Well, what does that mean if we balkanize the standards? What does that mean for a car manufacturer? Does it give, for example, BMW, Audi, are they disadvantaged in the European market, the American market compared to a large standardized market in China, for example? Are we holding back our champions?
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Alexander Rogers10:49
If you have balkanized standards that have different technological requirements in different markets, you have to go through a number of different SKUs. You don't want to have to go through interoperability testing. Folks on the supply chain would have to do this interoperability testing that's different in all of these different countries because they've added different technological requirements. That will disadvantage a manufacturer from outside of that market. That choice can be made, it's just not a good choice. And it's not a good choice for manufacturers in Europe that are making cars that they want to deploy worldwide. It just creates cost and it creates inefficiency.
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Interviewer11:46
Okay, I want to ask you about SEPs as well, in terms of licensing for the automotive industry in Europe. How do you feel about this? What's your take on SEPs at the moment?
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Alexander Rogers12:10
Just take a look at mobile and what it has meant by way of revenue. In 2019, mobile was about 4.1 trillion dollars. Royalties associated with standard essential patents in 2019 were somewhere in the 10 to 13 billion dollar range. You're talking about royalty rates for the entire SEP licensing market of less than one percent, zero point something percent. It's a bit of a tempest in a teapot. But SEPs and the licensing regimes are critical to driving ongoing innovation. That's now, as I said before, not only going to benefit the future of the handset space but the future of the automotive space and the future of every other vertical. Companies like Qualcomm invest billions of dollars to innovate in fundamental cellular technology that will now benefit every vertical. They have a licensing business and they have to get a reasonable return on that licensing business in order to drive that innovation. So all of the battles that were fought in the mobile litigation wars were all designed to compress that return, to essentially make it de minimis and to make it frankly not worthwhile to continue to innovate for the industry in general. That's bad policy. Those battles have essentially been won. A lot of arguments have been put to bed. We shouldn't carry that over as 5G extends into automotive, automotive into other verticals. We should put an end to that and actually just drive some solutions for the industry.
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Interviewer14:10
The value of this innovation is enormous. It's trillions of dollars of benefit. Okay, we're running close in time, so I just want to ask you about I read Qualcomm is working on a collaborative research project with, I think it's Eurocom, Franz Breve, and IMT as well. Why is this important for Qualcomm to participate with research partners like this?
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Alexander Rogers14:34
We really appreciate the opportunity to work with Franz Breve, IMT, and Eurocom. It's important to us because as a research organization that is engaged in technology development and tech transfer, we look for partners who understand that and appreciate that. I think it's very important for any innovation economy to have a deep appreciation of that. Franz Breve is essentially a standards organization. Franz Breve is providing essentially the IP help and the standardization help in conjunction with IMT and Eurocom, and Qualcomm is providing the funding. So this is an important partnership that keeps a focus on the foundation of everything that's going to happen with respect to 5G and cellular, which is important to us. Obviously, we've been in Europe for a long, long time, 30 years, 11 different countries, 29 offices. We care about innovation in Europe. It's very important to us to have good partnerships at a level of deep innovation.
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Interviewer15:46
Alex Rogers, thanks so much for joining us over coffee today.
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Alexander Rogers15:50
Great, thanks for having me.