Qualcomm’s use of on-device generative AI in its latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile processor may boost smartphone sales, which have remained stagnant over the last few quarters. Alex Katouzian, SVP and GM of Qualcomm’s Mobile, Compute, and XR, told indianexpress.com, “What is most likely to trigger an upgrade cycle is AI.”
“The upgrade cycle for these devices has become longer because it’s somewhat stagnant. They have seen improvements in graphics, an increase in camera capabilities, but the display remains largely the same. We went to foldable phones, which were cool but have not yet reached the mass market,” he explained his reasoning before suggesting AI will be the trigger for upgrades now.
At its Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii this week, Qualcomm and its OEM partners, such as Honor and Xiaomi, have made a big pitch of running generative AI directly on smartphones instead of relying on cloud-based processing, which not only requires a strong internet connection but also significant running costs.
“We began experimenting with on-device AI in 2015, primarily focusing on functions that run continuously in the background. We gradually improved various aspects, including photography and videography, security, malware network detection, and personal assistant translation. About a year and a half ago, with the sudden surge in popularity of large language models and ChatGPT becoming available, although no one initially understood what that even stood for, we had already been working on this for nearly a decade,” he added.
For Katouzian, bringing AI to run directly on a smartphone is not a one-off initiative by Qualcomm; rather, it’s a collaborative effort involving the entire industry, including chipmakers, OS companies, cloud providers, and OEMs. “The OEMs and the cloud companies are working with us to determine how to run these types of generative models on a device,” he said, emphasising that the user experience is better on a device. “This doesn’t mean their cloud isn’t used; in fact, it’s more heavily used than they can handle. So they need to offload some tasks to the devices, and then they can take over,” he continued.
For many years now, these annual refreshes of chips and flagship smartphones barely feel different from the last few generations. This led phone manufacturers to cram more features and add impressive specs, but without taking any risks. However, in the generative artificial intelligence era, smartphones may look different not from the outside but in how they interact with users.
“The interface to your PC or phone is, ‘Let me launch an app. You touch or point and click. You may not need to do that,’” says Katouzian. “I think apps will coexist, but they will get integrated into the human interface. You may not even need to launch them; your assistant will retrieve the data you need. This means that if apps are going to continue to be used, developers better start incorporating some of these capabilities into their apps; otherwise, they will be left behind because it will be an outdated way of doing things.”
Katouzian says the role of devices will be critical going forward in the Gen AI landscape. “You still need some sort of screen, either in your hand or in front of you,” he said. However, what’s going to change is the interface and how you interact with the device, such as when you speak and things will start to happen. “You are not going to be wearing glasses all the time. So what does that mean? That means some sort of device has to exist. I think the devices will continue to exist, but if you’re in a situation where you can use your eyes as a screen, that’s great.”
Katouzian agrees that the performance of a smartphone still matters, especially now that Qualcomm is pushing hard to run generative AI directly on smartphones and laptops. The latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile processor brought better efficiency, improved gaming performance, and camera upgrades. He says the camera is still going to be an important factor in buying a smartphone, but Katouzian expects that AI could become a metric for how you choose your future smartphone.
“We soon have to look for a metric because people are not going to understand tokens per second. They’re not going to understand quantitisation. They are not going to understand any of those things. Maybe tops are something, but it’s not a fully descriptive solution for you. But the consumer will say if higher tops are better, and I’m going to buy it. I think sooner or later that’s going to become a metric.”
“AI is going to receive so much attention, and the user is not going to care whether it’s running on the device or on the cloud; they just know it’s being used. So if more and more first-party and third-party applications start getting AI, people want to use it all the time,” he continued.
Global smartphone shipments for this year are expected to significantly decline, with the market being weighed down by the US and China. According to Counterpoint Research, smartphone shipments in 2023 are anticipated to decrease by 6 per cent year-on-year to 1.15 billion devices. However, India continues to be a bright spot for the smartphone industry, with sales of high-end phones, in particular, on the upswing due to easy trade-in options and exchange offers.
“Not everyone in India is going to be buying high-end or premium-tier phones,” he said. However, there is a trend in the market where low-end users are upgrading to mid-tier phones, and mid-tier buyers are upgrading to high-premium tier phones. That trend is now clearer than ever before. India is no longer a low-end [phone] market.”
MORE: