Gadgetory

hey this is Josh from the verge and we're here with dr. Pauly Jacobs the chairman and CEO of Qualcomm and we're gonna talk a little bit about what they're working on right now a little bit of history and just see what the future holds so Paul thanks for taking the time thanks for having me so Qualcomm was founded in 1985 right right by your father that's right my father and a few other people and they had worked at a previous company called Linc a bed the really cool thing was Linc a bit used digital communications theory for like really expensive stuff like military and space applications but then Moore's law came along and made it cheaper right so Qualcomm even though they didn't think about it at the time really was all about taking that really complicated technology and putting it in consumer and commercial applications so like our first thing was messaging satellite messaging to trucks and imagine that they had little antennae Miller's exactly with little satellite antennas that tracked where the satellite was and that's how you did messaging interesting and then we came on the cellular system you know CDMA technology a little bit later but it was the same kind of thing how do you take this really complex technology and stick it in something that people can carry around with them that's cheap enough right but welcome hasn't been a real household name until pretty recently I mean people have no I think welcomes been in you know people know the company they know that you're involved and these 2n devices they use but in the last few years there's been a real explosion in mobile and you guys were there obviously you're there on the comp ground literally on the ground floor of that yeah and well not literally but you're there very early yeah how is that how does that changed how how you do what you do I mean has it changed it at all in the sense that you're now consumer-facing you're making product Snapdragon has become a kind of household name when it comes to mobile devices has that change the rate of innovation that you feel like you need to have has it changed in your pace yeah I don't think so I mean we really had been trying to drive the wireless internet for a really long time in the very early days of CDMA we actually put the internet protocols inside the phone now people didn't know it was in there because it looked like it was one of those Hayes modems the 80 dt blah blah blah and made all the noises and stuff right but we actually had the Internet inside it and so in the end we've put a browser on the on the front end and just connected in the Internet on the back end and that's how we ended up with Internet on on cell phone so we've been doing that since really the early nineties yeah and that now what's cool is because smart phones are so popular now there's other ways that we can innovate so we used to innovate a lot about the radio technology we still do a lot of that because there's so much data demand but now we're innovating on the you know the CPU you know the microprocessor technology the graphics technology Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity technology just all these different areas where we can add like extra functionality into the device and now we're actually going up another level so we've been doing augmented reality for example so kind of platforms of technology still enabling other people to build their stuff on top of our stuff right but it's kind of another layer up if you think of it how are you integrating that with I mean you guys are doing like you know you're talking about radio technology and processor technology how is augmented reality a piece of that I mean is that is that a software layer is that an actual hardware layer oh is that yeah it's interesting because there's some software obviously and there's a developer's kit for the developers to use it but then to actually make it work well it integrates into a lot of things like sensors in the phone whether it's the camera or the accelerometer makes us have to make the graphics processor work really fast so that you know when you move the phone around and the image on the screen changes you got to change exactly how that 3d object that you're compositing in their ranges to so you're basically creating this almost off-the-rack combination of things you can say if you're doing augmented reality we've got we've got the combo of things you need to make it really work in a device exactly and then we the triangle and then we try and optimize we say yeah that's gonna work better on a Snapdragon chip even though you'll get it to work on other devices because we want to cover all the different platforms the developers really want you to you know kind of cover the whole landscape yeah they don't want to be locked in right yeah which makes sense so so speaking on mobile devices you guys really have a lot more consumer facing stuff now then then you've ever ever had I think so you've got snapdragon and mobile phones and in tablets and that's what the pace of that is insane I mean you guys are every it feels like every few weeks there's new Snapdragon there's you hear of a new model number and it's faster and it's got you know it's smaller or is that do you feel a lot of pressure from the competition I mean you guys aren't the only people doing harm associations right so it seems like there's an immense amount of pressure from other companies because you see you'll see this you know it seems like the same phone with this with a different chip on it right how much is that how much of that is is it's burning innovation how much of that is making you guys kind of think faster I mean there's definitely a lot of pressure to innovate quickly and we have a lot of products sort of lined up in parallel so that they can come out that quickly because obviously we don't do them in that short sort of a period of time so there's you know there is a lot of pressure to drive technology for but I think we've always felt that way because we always felt even from the very beginning that in the end the phone was going to be the computing and entertainment platform for everybody and so to get from where we were which used to be you know text-based phones and it really cruddy screens and stuff I got to where we are today there was a long way to go so we've been pushing ourselves pretty hard for a long time and I do agree that there's you know there's definitely more competition and there's probably competition that's gonna come from you know the likes of an Intel from above and right you know some of the other guys from below I mean exactly for mobile so exactly but but these are the incremental changes that we see are they are they happening because the allit maybe challenges a little bit here are they happening because the industry wants to just see an uchi you know a new chipset every so often or is there real innovation happening in those iterations and those small iterations of these sets there's definitely new stuff going on I mean we completely changed the architecture of our microprocessor from the last generation of chips to this generation because people want stuff to happen really fast I mean you care that when you touch the screen stuff animates quickly and you know things like augmented reality take a lot of computation and voice recognition all these different ways of interfacing with the phone take a lot of compute capability and so we are innovating there when you look at the radio technology I mean we're going from three to 4G to a completely different kind of signaling technology and I don't want to get into all the details of it but it is fundamentally different right and then you've got to make those things I'll work backward and forward compatible and then you say okay well from there what do you do next because we're you know we're planning for a thousand times increase in data demand over the next few years and we got to do some pretty serious innovation to make that work right so you feel that they're not then these are baby steps these are real real steps every time we spent three billion dollars in R&D last year and it's mostly yeah in one years like a change yeah and it's mostly focused on how do we drive all these different vectors whether it's the radio or the you know computer the graphics or Connacht it you know how do we drive that stuff faster and faster right so I want to talk about 2012 and what you guys have planned for the future I mean mobile everybody knows you as hey you're doing sound drag you're doing mobile stuff but you're going other places too now that Windows 8 is there's an ARM version of Windows 8 this changes your place in the industry a little bit in the sense that you have not been the company that's making chips for laptops and for you know devices there are you know Windows devices right you know how this is a big deal for you I mean are you looking at this as a big opportunity yeah no I think it's gonna be really cool and I think people are gonna be amazed by the kind of form factors that they get when you use a mobile chip but you use it for a full computing environment and so we're gonna see really thin light devices gonna be pretty cool so we're we're really excited about it and we're working with a lot of companies not just our traditional phone companies but the traditional PC manufacturers are really interested in this too because they get it I mean everybody wants to be connected all the time you want to have your device you know always synchronizing your email and your calendar and your Facebook and you know all that stuff that you come to depend on right and the funny thing too that I always found was when you have it with you you're sort of less ponent of delay you don't want to wait open the thing up have it boot up have it then you know synchronized yeah now you just want to touch it and have it work and obviously on yeah and obviously iPads a great example of that I mean it became so popular because it did provide that this is gonna provide that Plus you know office and that computing environment the impression I get from Microsoft and I'm sure you're getting a similar impression and you guys are probably I mean you're not probably you're definitely working on this stuff we're gonna see devices you tell me if I'm wrong that are act like a tablet do everything that a tablet does you know it's kind of a touch optimized not just windows with touch but a touch completely touch optimized experience but then you go home you dock it somewhere and suddenly you've got a full-featured laptop I mean that's that is really kind of the future of those devices and you guys are gonna be there making the chips for those devices yeah I mean we're absolutely investing heavily to make sure that we have a lot of compute power but focus on you know power consumptions so it isn't a thing that just runs out of juice right away it isn't a thing that needs a fan to cool it off and that kind of stuff and that's that to me is what's really important take the kind of the the way that we made smartphones make them so easy to use and simple and light and always-on and that's a and bring that to the full computing environment and by the way I mean Microsoft's done a great job on that we did this demo with them at their build conferences their Developers Conference of connected standby mode and so people are thinking okay is Microsoft gonna be able to lower the power consumption of Windows so they can't act like a smartphone but they did and we showed it off and it's cool you know when you stop using the thing the power consumption goes way down it goes into kind of a hibernating state but it wakes up every so often to synchronize and when you touch the screen boom everything comes back on yeah that's gonna change the way people use our computer I think so you know we talked about Intel before but this really puts you in a big way into competition with Intel in a place where you've never been in competition with I mean they're coming into mobile doing mobile chips now right you guys are going the opposite direction here you're gonna start doing laptop systems so I mean that's a shift for you I mean you're competing in a space you're competing with a lot of big players and in a new spaceman you've been competing with big players in the mobile space right you know does that change the way your business though just does that change the business model or is Qualcomm a different company after a Windows 8 and it was before I'm for those customers that have a certain way of working we will adapt to their way of working meaning that Intel had provided certain technologies and sort of reference designs and products and so forth to those manufacturers and if that's the way they want to work with us we'll adapt to that I mean we're one of the things I think we've done pretty well is go to different kinds of companies in the various industries you know you take in the very beginning Samsung and LG we're consumer electronics companies we worked with them to become you know big telecom companies right and you go to China and you have a ZT and Huawei I mean they really weren't consumer electronics companies but we figured a way to work with that then now we're working with a lot of companies that are like these real small companies that just they have a distribution channel they have some manufacturing we give them almost a complete phone design so we've learned how to work with them so I just think it's an evolution of how do you manage to the relationship with the customer how do you get them up to speed and then also for us to work with them whatever way is comfortable for them right and another way you're adapting is your I mean we said it's more your more consumer facing now but you're doing smart TV stuff you're doing connected homework can you tell me a little about where you know where you see that going and where you see Qualcomm being being involved in that yes I mean it's kind of an evolution of the vision of what the phone should do so for a long time we've been working on the idea that the phone was gonna be the center where all this stuff came in and you did your entertainment and computing and stuff on the phone right now we've put so much effort into the phone and those chips are so capable that they can actually power purpose-built devices so we see them going out into consumer electronics devices into things like TVs into game consoles into printers and access points all these different things that you might have in the house and then you say okay well what's the phones role in that well we look at it as a phone will sit in the center it'll kind of sense that you have opportunities to interact with things around you maybe there's content you can download or a screen I can use or a speaker I can use or things like that so it'll sense that and it'll be my remote control to so I can actually interface with those things turn the lights on and off turn the screens on and so forth this is this the Internet of every yeah those are calling it yeah this is everything is talking to everything everything and it's not always wire lamps lamps duffel books what books I mean we're really into that because the ebooks right yeah not like a paper book well okay so a paper book we're doing stuff with augmented reality so you open up a paper book and you point you know your phone or your tablet at it and stuff comes out I mean take like a physics textbook it's just bizarre that there's little diagrams in a physics textbook when we all have computers you could just point your thing at it and actually have the experiment run in real time for you right although the textbook may be going away right it really gonna happen one hope you just open up your iPad or your take your Windows a tablet or something and you get a look at it you're gonna be able to manipulate it no I mean one hopes we'll see how fast that happen but I mean but you see you you think that we're getting to a point now where the standards are coming together so that we can actually do connect at homes and the right way you know have your phone be the center of that I think probably we were gonna get a few different silos of things hopefully it all comes together I mean if you look on the like application side at least we're getting things like html5 that work across a bunch of platforms we're trying to do a thing that works across you know across a bunch of operating systems but there may be an Apple version of Google version of Microsoft version and so on and so forth and you know we'll see how that works out and obviously the wireless operators and the cable companies they'll all have a say in this too because they got stuff in there laughing yeah so well I think this stuff's gonna shake out for a few years yet so you guys are doing this tricorder this XPrize tricorder thing can you tell me what that is and what the thinking behind it is now so we've been really focused on mobile health and like how do you make it cheaper simpler more consumer friendly so the idea with this thing is that there's gonna be teams that are gonna compete to build a thing like the tricorder which can actually diagnose diseases hopefully better than a doctor might even do it and do it not just for developed countries but you can imagine it for emerging markets as well where they don't have as much of a developed healthcare system so the idea is that people will come up with sensors they'll come up with a device there'll be some artificial intelligence associated with it to help do the diagnosis and we're gonna see how close we can get to that you know vision that Star Trek had of waving this thing over you and then you actually imagine doing one of these you know have a scan of somebody and getting that kind of information back on the device so there's you know the question of how invasive of a thing is it does it take a bit to suffer that's one be pretty invasive I think okay but it's actually not that far-fetched because there are guys right now working on sensors that would actually get embedded in your body and as an example they can find certain cells that start circulating in your body 24 hours or more before you have a heart attack so the notion is that you have a sensor that's actually lodged in the vein in your wrist that's watching for that DNA coming by now if you imagine the phone acting as the tricorder oh it's doing is interrogating that sensor that's already inside your body right and if you think that's weird by the way use of the word interrogating is always you know the sensor inside your body is being interrogated interfacing I think that's it's kind of an incredible idea but I mean it's exciting that you're trying to push that forward I mean sure there there could be abuses of that sort of thing very easily but I mean when you think about the kind of healthcare problems that we have not just here in America but around the world yeah that could be a tool that would save a lot of lives yeah and and I mean we're really focused on how do you use the technology for you know the good of mankind I mean it it honestly is the biggest technology platform that humanity's create them in wireless systems are six billion subscriptions so great almost everybody has access to these systems and it gives you a huge opportunity but also feels like a big responsibility like what are we gonna do as an industry to use this technology and improve people's quality of life and standard of living and this seems like a really obvious one because we all know you know countries are going bankrupt trying to support their health care systems yeah we've got to make them more productive more cost-effective you know we've got to get this technology and really focus it in on these kinds of problems now you know it's obviously gonna be a long road it's hard to get things into the healthcare system there's a lot of issues about safety when you talk about things that might even be inside your body so the gonna be a lot of work that goes between here and there but if we don't get it kicked off it never happens this is an idea to focus attention get a lot of teams from around the world focusing in on it over the next three years we'll have a bunch of different sub competitions and hopefully we come up with something that's like the tricorder at the end that would be really amazing I know you have to run I have one final question you you know you you guys stand right at the you're right at the forefront of innovation in terms of our industry what is what's going to be the sea change you know we saw the iPhone and the iPad kind of explode and maybe they became that moment of change for art for the industry what's the next thing is it motion is it voice is it something you know is it that you know connected home I mean where is the next big wave coming from where do you see it happening I mean I think it is Wireless as an enabling technology to these other things and it is this notion that you know you'll have the phone as a digital sixth sense it'll tell you what's around you and you'll be able to interact with those things and to deal with this thousand acts increase in data demand that we see we're gonna have to do stuff like not just new radio technologies in the wide area but also peer-to-peer technology so I think devices are all going to be talking to each other and we're starting to see some of that stuff happen now but if I walk into a room and on an ad-hoc basis I can light up the screen there and take control of the speakers or I get in my car and my car says to my phone hey these are the buttons I have these are the screens I have this speaker that I have in the phone says this is the content I have and this is the map I have and these things just all talk to each other I think that will be a really cool world and it'll make things happen in a much simpler way than they happened today it sounds magical and it'll be cool well I really hope that that happens we're trying Paul thank you so much thanks for the time you