Qualcomm has been making strides in India to drive digital connectivity while focusing on expansion and launching new platforms to cater to more customers. Some of the marquee announcements from Qualcomm India in the last few months were announcing the new design centre in Tamil Nadu last year and other initiatives to support the wireless ecosystem in India, including university grants (for example, the 6G University Research Program), awards, fellowships as well as support for startups via programmes like Qualcomm Design in India Challenge. Qualcomm Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 System-on-Chip (SoC) makes a 5G phone available for under Rs. 10,000 with partners like Xiaomi, which launched Redmi A4 5G last year. Qualcomm also pushed the envelope for AI PCs with the launch of the Snapdragon X platform in the previous year. The biggest highlight of the platform has been on-device AI capabilities, which Qualcomm showcased at its India launch last week.
The company’s effort, which I can say has been nothing short of a Qualcomm 2.0 strategy under Savi Soin, Senior Vice President and President of Qualcomm India, where the brand is focusing on the Indian market from almost every aspect. At the sidelines of MWC 2025 in Barcelona, Gadgets 360 got to catch up with Soin to talk about the many announcements Qualcomm India has made in the last few months.
We first wanted to understand the new strategy leading the growth, the team size Qualcomm India currently has, and whether the company plans to add more centres or engineers.
Soin started with teams at Qualcomm, saying, “We have a lot of new team members, a lot of new energy. My role was to come in and really showcase what Qualcomm globally is doing. And then, I had the entire Qualcomm India team right behind us to help. And, you know, these are amazing innovators and engineers sitting in various locations around India.”
He said, “My strategy was three-fold, so the first is like Snapdragon for India. Get products that are “Made for India” in the market when it comes to either fixed wireless, automotive, or two-wheeler. Let’s get products that you know that are meaningful for Indian customers. We wanted to ensure that we had Snapdragon for India, and you see a lot of events under that same team. Right then, the other thing was to showcase with Snapdragon in India. What are we doing? Last year, we announced our Chennai Design Centre, which specialises in wireless connectivity solutions and primarily focuses on innovations that complement Wi-Fi technologies.”
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On Qualcomm’s new office in New Delhi and other missions, he said, “We have a big office now. So we’re doing a lot of work. Beyond that, we are participating in India in the semiconductor mission AI mission, and really, we are participating to see what we can do to help more under “Make in India” as well. Our second strategy is to have mentorships run on semiconductors and women entrepreneurs. We have many different initiatives closely tied to who we are as a company and what we can deliver to the community and the country at large. And lastly, the third one is to co-drive the ecosystem. Working with developers, as some amazing LLMs are coming in.”
Soin also talked about how Qualcomm wants to create a partner ecosystem that takes advantage of the tech. About the year 2024, he said, “And it’s been, it’s been really good to sort of execute on it in 2024, and I think, like I keep saying, We’re just getting started.”
Qualcomm has had a longstanding presence in India, even before it became a trend. A prime example is your R&D centers in Hyderabad and Bangalore, which celebrated their 20th anniversary last year. How crucial has it been to keep these R&D centres local and develop products that cater to local demands? Soin added, “You know, I think that our teams are doing well. They’re looking to customise the use cases for the Indian market. It could be an ADAS experience right on our flex platform. What is the requirement for the Indian market? You and I know it is unique. You can have a cow, you can have a cycle, you can have a wall. Yeah, there are so many different things that one has to think about when writing some of these algorithms. It’s not there in Germany, nor is it in any other country in the world. So, I think these and the R&D teams that we have are doing an amazing job working with local partners, showcasing our tech, and implementing commercial deployments. So we’re very excited about what we are actually doing with the engineering team we have. Last year, we opened up a larger facility in Chennai. So that means we’re obviously looking to expand where we need more innovators selectively. I think the amazing engineers we have at Qualcomm, especially in India, are perfect.”
Soin also talked about new initiatives Qualcomm is taking, like new experience zones. “I wish I could bring a car to a Chroma store. But you go to the Chroma Juhu store, right where you can where you can experience the phone, the PC, the Smart Glasses, and very soon, the hearables and wearables – all powered by Qualcomm, and I go to a lot of these customers. And, you know, I tell you, in a few meetings I went to, the customers almost wanted to talk to me about how I can improve the user experience of using a phone in the car. They want to talk about how you can help me with the experience of somebody with smart glasses entering a car – they’re all about how we bring a cross-platform experience,” he said.
Referring to the Snapdragon X series announcement last week in India, Soin said, “We can make your PC and how it communicates to a phone more seamless. How your phone communicates with the router, how the glasses you use with some of the wireless networking products, we have to offload some of that computation onto a route so you can see a lot of different Snapdragon Dragon-enabled products that are sort of that premium experience.”
Briefly touching upon the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 SoC, Qualcomm believes it will help convert non-5G users to a 5G smartphone. Soin said, “See, this is where we are competing in India very effectively. India is going premiumisation, but still, you know, the average ASP is still lower than the US and Japan, but still, like, it’s amazing, you know, to say, hey, we can bring you that same experience. You don’t have to go buy a very expensive phone. And that’s what we are all trying to do, is make it affordable to all.”
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Qualcomm announced Dragonwing, the new B2B solution designed to ensure a safe work environment and improve quality. Can you tell me more about this new Dragonwing offering? “We provide the underlying technology. But a lot of the use cases are for drones, whether it’s for defense or for industrial purposes. If there’s an emergency, in the US, there’s a 911 emergency call. Then, you know, first, you know, some of these, the firefighters as well as police, send a drone for us to say, what do you what’s going on? Check it out on the ground. You know, you can get quick. So I think, look, I don’t think a drone is a drone that one size fits all.”
He added, “I think there’ll be a lot of IoT in general. Each IoT, like where we call an edge box. That does inferences. It can do inferences for facial detection, for worker safety, for a lot of different for like scrap. You know, some people use it in their factories to make scrap. Some people want to, when you bring your car into the service centre, they want the camera to pick it up. You know how somebody walks around the car and says, Okay, there’s a dent here, you can quickly take a picture to identify the dents in one go, that’s how tech can help. So the experience becomes a lot better. So, for each of these camera edge boxes with AI, everything is custom. You know, it’s now coming down to, you know, what are the use cases that you want? So the customer is exactly right? So, we are excited that we can customise the use case. And we’re looking forward to it.”
Finally, when asked about the big Snapdragon X platform launch and how the response from OEMs has been, Soin said, “So look, brands are coming to us because of the form factor. You can check the booth here at MWC 2025, which has so many Snapdragon X-powered laptops. I mean, it’s pretty cool because of the form factor. I mean, it has amazing battery life. And we are providing the experience. Some of the use cases that we’re showing, you know, for India, are perfect. People are already used to them on a phone powered by Snapdragon—for example, noise cancellation on calls on Snapdragon X-powered laptops. I think we showed a demo, a video right at the X launch, right, where somebody sits in a subway or railway station in a very noisy environment where they make an announcement every few seconds. You can use features like transcription, right for a meeting, and live translation. Until now, all of this has not been possible on a device where you are not connected. But, with Snapdragon X laptops, you don’t need connectivity. Features like these work perfectly on-device.”
For details of the latest launches and news from Samsung, Xiaomi, Realme, OnePlus, Oppo and other companies at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, visit our MWC 2025 hub.
