Qualcomm tries to make friends and influence people in China

Embattled chip giant Qualcomm is so keen to acquire new allies it has held a special event in China to court its smartphone vendors.

In common with the rest of the industry it’s all about 5G this year, and for the foreseeable future, for Qualcomm. We’re already all too aware how aroused telcos’ marketing departments are at the prospect of slapping 5G on everything, on the assumption that they’ll flog loads more of it as a consequence. This trend is likely to be most conspicuous among smartphone vendors.

A lot of these are Chinese, so it makes sense for Qualcomm to make a bee-line for them, especially since the only other two of note are Samsung, which has an ambivalent chip relationship with Qualcomm, and Apple, which seems to actively despise Qualcomm. The result is the ‘5G Pioneer Initiative’, which involves Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, Lenovo, ZTE and Wingtech. What, no Huawei?

“5G will bring massive new opportunities to the mobile industry, and we are excited to work with these manufacturers on this 5G Pioneer Initiative,” said Cristiano Amon, president of Qualcomm. “Qualcomm Technologies has close relationships within China’s mobile and semiconductor ecosystem, and we’ll continue to work with this ecosystem to drive innovation as we move from the 3G/4G era to the 5G era.” Everyone else said stuff too, but it was more of the same. Suffice it to say they’re all pleased, excited and committed.

On top of that Lenovo, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi all signed a memorandum of understanding (where’s the photo? How do we know it happened unless there’s a photo of loads of people in suits standing behind a desk with a bit of paper on it?) for the multi-year purchase of RF front-end solutions.

Apparently all this MoU amounts to is a statement of intent to purchase some gear from Qualcomm, but with no obligations, so you have to wonder what the point of it is. Our guess would be that this is some bullish messaging directed at investors currently being courted by Broadcom as part of its hostile takeover bid. Lots of spokespeople said things, again.