About Steven Mollenkopf
In 2018, Mollenkopf expressed disappointment over the termination of Qualcomm's deal to acquire NXP Semiconductors, but noted that the company had grown its non-mobile revenue to $5 billion, a 70% increase since the deal was signed. He stated that Qualcomm did not see a change in China's posture toward the company despite the deal's failure, and described the business environment there as "very friendly" and "very constructive."
Throughout 2019 and 2020, Mollenkopf described 5G as a fundamental technology change comparable to electricity or water, and cited an IHS study estimating it would generate $13.2 trillion in economic value by 2035. He said that 5G would disrupt industries including healthcare, energy, retail, and manufacturing. Mollenkopf also stated that he did not expect a separation of international 5G standards, saying it was not in the interest of companies like Qualcomm and Huawei to create such a divide. He characterized Qualcomm as the world's leading wireless technology innovator, citing $61 billion in R&D investment over 35 years.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Steven Mollenkopf's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Tim Bradshaw0:04
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, I sat down with Qualcomm's Steve Mollenkopf. He's taking over from Paul Jacobs to become the chief executive at the chipmaker in March. I started off by asking him about the announcements that the company has made around wearable technology and particularly its top smartwatch at the event.
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Steven Mollenkopf0:22
I think if you look at the wearable market in general, you should view it as an extension of the technologies that we develop for the smartphone, with the exception of certain technologies that are particular or well-suited toward wearables. So with the watch, what we did was we wanted to provide a showcase for two technologies: one was our Mirasol screen, the other one was our wireless technology, as well as to work on some of these problems so that we understood them better so we could provide the underlying technology to our customers. So it's not really something that is a standalone business for us; it's more of a technology showcase.
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Tim Bradshaw1:00
Among Qualcomm's announcements at the event was a partnership with Audi and a new Formula E electric racing car. These technologies are designed to showcase what Qualcomm can do beyond its core area of mobile devices and take its technology into a whole new area of automotive.
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Steven Mollenkopf1:17
There's just this huge demand for people to take what they use on the smartphone and use it in their car as well, and there's good reasons for that. In addition to just using infotainment or connection to the cloud in your car, the good reasons from the car manufacturers' point of view to provide this real-time always-on diagnostics and actually feature upgrade capability in a car. Consumers really like that. And I think electric vehicles and the infrastructure to make electric vehicles successful actually rely on a fair bit of radio technology to transfer the power, so you want to be able to do that in a way that is the easiest way to get it done. And we think the ability to participate in a new racing thing based off of green and innovative technologies is interesting for us.
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Tim Bradshaw2:08
The smartphone market is becoming more saturated in developed markets such as the US and Europe, but also prices are starting to fall in emerging markets. So I asked Mr. Mollenkopf how much more innovation there is to come in the world of mobile devices themselves.
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Steven Mollenkopf2:22
We're just starting. I mean, really, if you look at what applications take advantage of on a phone, it's location, it's connectivity, and it's the camera. But we're probably at an elementary level; we're definitely not in college yet in terms of being able to take advantage of everything that the phone will be able to do.
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Tim Bradshaw2:45
So while this year's CES was billed as the year of the wearable, I think the technology still has some way to go before it's a real mass market proposition. This is Tim Bradshaw for the Financial Times in San Francisco.
