Without a beating heart, the human body does not function. For electronic devices like smart phones or the computersthe heart are the microprocessors that inhabit its interior, as indispensable as they are little known. Qualcomm is the world’s leading company in the design of chips for mobile technology, but it also seeks to be so in the construction of the so-called ‘metaverso’.
To learn more about his strategy and future plans in Spain, we spoke with Don McGuire, vice president and marketing director of Qualcomm, within the framework of the Snapdragon Summit, the annual congress that the company holds in Maui, Hawaii, and which EL PERIÓDICO attended. invited by the company.
2022 has been a difficult year for the technology sector, in general, and for the mobile market, with a drop in sales that has hurt your business. What do they attribute this setback to?
Macroeconomic conditions have been challenging. What has affected us is that when we entered the pandemic there was a massive increase in the demand for electronic devices, but the supply chain was also broken. Our customers kept buying and buying to seize the moment. The turning point was when the world began to open up again and spending shifted from products to services, trips, concerts and everything that people had not been able to do in those years. That has caused too much inventory to build up throughout the production chain, leading all parties — from the retailer to the distributor to the manufacturer — to reduce demand for chips. The entire tech ecosystem has been caught up in that inventory problem.
Qualcomm shares have lost a third of their value. Are the prospects better for 2023?
We are facing a cyclical problem and we believe that in two four-month periods it can recover its balance. Things will start to get back to normal in mid-2023, but it will depend on how sales go during the Christmas season.
“Things will start to return to normal in mid-2023”
Don McGuire, vice president of Qualcomm
In May, Pedro Sánchez met in Davos with the president of Qualcomm, Christian Amon. The government wants to attract investment from companies like Qualcomm to compete in the chip sector. What plans do you have in the country?
I know that they spoke for Qualcomm to do more in Spain and we are studying what to do with our different businesses. We have acquired a Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) equipment in Valencia and we are starting to group people in different areas. We have our sights set on Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress and the talent that exists in the city.
productive meeting with @cristianoamon. We are the perfect place to develop XR applications and the AI ecosystem. In addition, Spain is starting a long-distance race to become a benchmark in the semiconductor industry and we want @Qualcomm be a key partner. pic.twitter.com/0oErCajza2
— Pedro Sánchez (@sanchezcastejon) May 24, 2022
The term metaverse has become popular all over the world. In October, Qualcomm announced its partnership with Meta to integrate your Snapdragon XR2 chips into the Meta Quest virtual reality headset. Is this market a new business opportunity?
We have been working in VR and AR for almost ten years and we have seen that each company has its definition of what the metaverse is. We don’t care what it becomes or what uses people end up putting it to, but we do know that we want to be the company that makes it possible. To access this experience you will need to have advanced connectivity (which does not yet exist) and a device, be it your mobile phone or glasses. We have experience in both fields and that is why we will be the entry platform into the metaverse.
Still, there is some mistrust around what the metaverse will be and which entries will control it…
There are a lot of people talking bad about the metaverse and part of it is due to the problems that Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are having. There are a lot of changes in opinion about it and we’ve been following it because we don’t want to be pigeonholed into a bad narrative. In general, the opinion is still quite positive, but we are focused on innovation. We’ve been working on that technology since before there was all this noise.
Do all these expectations play in your favor or against you?
The expectation will serve to accelerate its growth. And the more we can develop these technologies, the greater the opportunity for it to become a thing. Despite the criticism, the truth is that both VR and AR will grow as technology improves.
“We don’t care that it ends up being the metaverse, but we want to be the company that makes it happen”
Don McGuire, vice president of Qualcomm
Will the poor prospects affect the marketing of Meta Quest Pro?
Meta sold more Meta Quest and Meta Quest 2 devices than anticipated. In parallel, the ecosystem of VR and AR content creators has been growing, which is key. The Meta Quest Pro have a better design, are smaller and more comfortable, but we’ll see how they go. We are in a macroeconomic climate where people are shifting from buying physical goods to experiences. I don’t know if that will hinder the success of Meta Quest Pro.
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Does AR have a better chance of success than VR?
I think that from the point of view of consumers it has more utilities. Unlike VR, AR requires lighter devices that require less computational load. In the glasses you wear you could have some functions, but not all of them would be necessary because you already have your mobile with you. In fact, only with a ‘smarphone’ you can already see new layers overexposed to reality. VR is more about getting out of one world and into another; RA is more to have information about us.