Wearable Technology is Going to be the Next Way You Interact with Your Phone – Jacobs

Qualcomm Chairman & CEO Paul Jacobs spoke with FOX Business Network’s (FBN) Liz Claman about the future of Qualcomm technology. When asked about wearable technology Jacobs said, “we believe very strongly on wearables, because it is going to be the next way you interact with your phone” and that “we are building chip sets and other technology for that area.” Jacobs went on to talk about his competition and said, “our competitors are really quite far behind us and we continue to push the technology forward, getting faster and faster data rates.” When asked about Intel (INTC) as a competitor Jacobs said, “in order to be competitive with us” Intel has to integrate all the things we have into a chip. Jacobs also commented on the future growth of Qualcomm saying, looking forward “we are not going to grow quite as much.”

On whether Qualcomm is interested in wearable technology:

“Wearables are very interesting to us and in fact we have a watch that we brought out as a sort of reference design to try and set the bar for where wearables should be, and it incorporates some really new technology. A new screen technology that we’ve been developing, new wireless charging technology so you don’t have to plug your watch in – you just have to set it down on the carrying case and it charges. We believe very strongly on wearables, because it is going to be the next way you interact with your phone. I get all sorts of news alerts piped right to my wrist and it doesn’t distract me because it takes just one swipe of the figure to look at it and get it off my wrist and on to the next thing. I really believe people are going to enjoy having these kinds of technologies, obviously there is a lot of effort in that area we are building chip sets and other technology for that area.”

On Qualcomm’s competition with Intel:

“We are really investing heavily in new technology and new products and you know it is interesting because there are a lot of talk about competition between Intel and Qualcomm (QCOM) on microprocessor technology that goes into these mobile chips, but we also have a strong lead as I said on the radio modems side, but we have other stuff in there too. The whole front end, the way the phone deals with multiple frequency bands, the way that it does graphics and multimedia and integrates with sensors and cameras, we have a lead in all of these areas right now and they have to take all that stuff and integrate it into a chip in order to be competitive with us, so we are going to continue to push hard on all of those fronts.”

On Qualcomm’s competition:

“We are extremely excited about the launch of 4G. We are on our third generation of our 4G modem wire. All of our competitors are really quite far behind us and we continue to push the technology forward getting faster and faster data rates, because that’s what people really want when they want to use their smartphones.”

On Qualcomm business:

“We just finished a great year as you said. It’s actually been a combination of about three years at 30 percent average annual growth over those three years, so looking forward, yeah, we are not going to grow quite as much as that, but we are seeing second half of our year going strong because we have 4G launching in China. We have new products coming out, we are doing a little bit in terms of shaving some operating expenses, but still investing. We’ve invested 5 billion dollars in R&D in some great products last year and we will continue to do that, so business is still strong, lots of demand for smartphones and mobile data.”

Fox Business Network

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