It is very, very, very interesting. Sagun, this is the new Sagun 8 Elite. Qualcomm Global President or CEO, or in fact Qualcomm Global Chief Marketing Officer. And how exactly is Qualcomm transforming this tech space?
Today is very special because I am here at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit, and with me I've got Cristiano, who is the Global President and CEO of Qualcomm. And today I'm going to talk to him about the new announcements. Basically, Cristiano, first of all, congratulations for this amazing event. I mean, nice location, nice demos, great announcements all together. Congratulations.
Well, thank you, thank you very much. And thank you for being here with us. I think it's having all of you come in that will make this event so special. So thank you.
Pleasure. Cristiano, you know, mobile phones or let's say the PCs, they have become so integral a part of our lives that we would always want for them to be able to do more and more and more. And I'm sure for you as a brand, definitely it's a huge challenge: how do you beat your own records? And we have seen year on year that every year you always surprise us with something new. This year again, I was not expecting the kind of benchmark charts that you are showing, that this is what is possible in this tiny package. How do you feel about it?
We're excited. I think we're super happy. Look, this is the story of Qualcomm, this is the story of Snapdragon. We need to keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible. We have to reinvent ourselves every time, actually. As a matter of fact, success today at Snapdragon Summit just means we have to work harder for next year. But it's an exciting time for the company, for the industry. We're restoring the performance leadership to the Windows ecosystem. We're doing X Elite, which is now the performance champion of all mobile laptops. And if you look at what happened, it's what actually enabled AI to come to PCs with the Copilot Plus PCs. We're doing the same thing now in mobile, restoring the performance leadership to the Android ecosystem. We're revolutionizing cars. So it's an exciting time for the company. It shows that truly Snapdragon is everywhere, and we want to enable this future based on technology and processing capabilities, not only to run everything we do faster but to enable these new AI use cases.
You just said Snapdragon is everywhere, and I think it's very important that we tell all the viewers that it's not just in the smartphones or the PCs, maybe in the watches, even in these glasses, it's like even in cars, for example. So I think practically it's everywhere, we can say that.
Yes. Here's how I like to describe it, and especially how we think about our products. They're branded Snapdragon, the Snapdragon family of products. I said in the keynote, for example, thinking about data center, data center becoming bigger and bigger, that's what the cloud is, and that's moving to where energy is, right? Because so much energy is required. Snapdragon is different. Snapdragon is where the people are. So every time a human is using a computing device, behind that screen is a Snapdragon, and on the other side of the screen is a human. And that's how we think about Snapdragon and all of the different devices we can enable. It's in your phone, it's in your watch, in your earbud, it's in the glasses like the one you're wearing, it's going to be in your PC, and it's going to be in your car. And I think that's the future of Snapdragon. That's what we're trying to bring to the show: innovation across all those industries. And actually, it shows really the potential of this platform to be a part of our digital lives going forward.
So you know, all these devices that we have, AI has been the buzzword for the last two years, but I think more importantly it's the on-device AI which is very crucial for the users. Maybe you don't want to send your data to the cloud, maybe you are in a location where there is no network, so on-device AI becomes very important. And I think Qualcomm is the one who is taking this step ahead in terms of making people able to use AI on their devices. And now we have seen in terms of the mobile processors, or in fact even the PCs that you have on-device AI, and you just spoke about on-device AI in cars. How exactly does that translate to a better user experience?
Yes. When you think about on-device AI in general, look, I can give you many, many reasons why that's going to develop, but I'm going to just pick three reasons. One reason is what I tried to describe and show in this video: one thing that AI enables on device is a new shift in user experience. Now the computer understands human language, now the computer understands what you see, what you hear, what you say, what you write. So that's one reason you're going to have a lot of on-device AI: it's changing the construct of what you run on computers and what the experience the computer provides to you. And that's what we're going to see, this new type of AI-first experience, which you need AI running on device to be right there interacting with you. That's one reason. The second reason is, how do you create an experience that is personalized to you? Your device knows who you are, where you are. You just gave me an example that you have today on your Meta glasses, you know the context around you, and it has the ability not only to personalize but to keep your data private. That's another reason it's going to run on a device, because it's about understanding your intent and dealing with your data, your context, in a very private way. That's the second reason. The number three reason: it's going to democratize AI. It's going to make sure that AI is running in the palm of your hand and you have the ability to bring that AI capability to everyone. Those are enough reasons, there's more, but that's why we're so excited about what's going to happen at the edge, and it's going to happen on devices. I talk about phones. On the comment you made about cars, it's incredible. When you are behind the wheel, a natural language interface is the interface that you're going to use. You're going to talk to the car, and you'll be able to see some of those use cases when you get entertained from the car, you get productive in the car, you communicate in the car. And that's a whole new paradigm shift in computing.
Cristiano, you just gave so many examples, and even at the keynote, I think now the bar is even more high with the Oryon coming to the smartphones. But you just said that we are just getting started. So what would you tell all the viewers: what can they expect in times to come in terms of even more powerful hardware, or maybe in terms of applications being developed? How exactly do you see the future?
Well, first of all, our job is to make sure that we create a platform and put it in the hands of users to make this future possible. So the first part is they should expect much more capable hardware. Processing performance is going to increase. You need new types of computing engines to run AI all the time. And the unique thing that only Qualcomm can do is you'll be able to add all of this computing power, but you're not going to compromise battery life, you're not going to compromise form factor, you're not going to compromise thermals. Now, what would this technology really do for the users? And I think that's part of the conversation we had this morning. I think we are now very familiar with thinking in terms of apps, because that's the construct that got created for us for the smartphone transition. When we had feature phones, we didn't think in terms of apps. But now we got a computer which is this, the smartphone has an OS, has an app store, and you have apps. That's your experience. That's going to change. That's going to be now an agent that is going to be there for you, and you're going to see use cases and applications building on top of the agent. So besides providing the new computing engine, we're going to see the creation of a whole new experience. And that's why I provide the example like a banking app, which everybody has. You don't think of a banking app when you think about innovation, but you saw the innovation right there: how the agent is going to fundamentally change that experience. It's much more natural to use. And that's going to be true for everything else. And that's what people are going to see. We're going to see a revolution. And now we see a few tens of new AI experiences. That's going to become hundreds, and that's going to become thousands, and that's going to become hundreds of thousands. And then we're going to say, yes, we can live without it. And I think that's no different from what we saw when we started to transition from feature phone to smartphones. It started like that, and we see exactly the same pattern right now. So we are just getting started in AI. I think the smartest smartphones are coming soon.
Yes. One last question before I wind this up. You know, back in India, I talked to many of your users, and if I go on a street, maybe a smartphone store, and if I just ask that you would want to get a new smartphone, which processor would you pick? I would say more than 90% the answer is always Qualcomm. Maybe they know the company Qualcomm, maybe they have no idea, but they know Snapdragon. So it's somewhere there. How do you take that response? Because I'm sure globally, it's not just about India, it's globally that people definitely have made their choices towards Qualcomm. Is it overwhelming for you, or how exactly do you take it?
No, no. Look, first of all, it's humbling. And I think it's at the same time motivating that what we actually do makes a difference. But I will add to the answer, and especially in India, we have today a very mature smartphone consumer. It's our inseparable device. Our digital life is on this device. You know, we have it with us. This is a smartphone-first country. I mean, people started their computing for the first time on a smartphone. The smartphone allowed people to have their experience with a personal computer and the experience with the internet. And because of that, people are generally interested to understand what is making all of that possible. And they care about the processor. They want to understand the capabilities of the processor. And that is the reason we see so much interest with technology. And I think that's, like I said, not only phones. That is going to be in the PCs, into watches, into glasses, into cars. So it's an exciting time. I think it shows that we're making a difference. At the same time, it's incredibly humbling for Qualcomm.
Amazing. So guys, there you have it. Cristiano straight, you know, answering all the questions. And I think the best is yet to come. It's only when you have these new devices powered by the new chips coming from Qualcomm and we get to experience all the potential that they pack in the small package with just our fingertips. Thank you, thank you so much. Appreciate it. I have with me Don, who happens to be the Global Chief Marketing Officer at Qualcomm, and today we're going to talk about a lot of things. Don, right? First things first, why Hawaii?
Well, Snapdragon Summit is as much a part of Hawaii as Hawaii has become part of Snapdragon Summit. We've hosted this event years two through now nine here in Hawaii, and it's been a really special place for a lot of reasons. One, it provides an amazing guest experience for all the global media and analysts and influencers. So I think you like that, appreciate that with these views. Amazing, right? And then on top of that, we kind of triangulated the planet and where our guests were coming from. We have a tremendous amount of guests from Asia, greater Asia, and then the US are kind of the most media that we've got. So we sort of picked a place kind of in between, and that's when Hawaii became the best option. We also look at things like infrastructure, connectivity, and so we couldn't go too remote, but we wanted to just provide a really good foundational location that checked all the boxes. Somebody notoriously is going to have to travel a really long way no matter where you pick on the globe. 30 hours for me? 30 hours, yes. But that would be true if we moved too far west or too far east. But we really have enjoyed it, and the local folks that we work with here in Hawaii on the island, from the resorts that we're at here on Maui to just local vendors, it's been a great way for us to inject much-needed economic help to an island that was just devastated last year by a massive wildfire.
