Mobile Future Forward – Seattle – Sept 24^th 8am-8pm

Registration (Registration closes this Friday)

In proud partnership with: Amdocs, Ericsson, HYLA Mobile, Intel, Mio Global, MoBack, Oracle Communications, Qualcomm, Synchronoss, and Tata Communications.

Mobile Future Forward Preview: Q&A with Matt Grob, EVP/CTO – Qualcomm

We are looking forward to welcome many of you to our Mobile Future Forward Summit next week. This is the final interview in the series and it is with our opening keynote speaker Matt Grob, EVP, Qualcomm Technologies and CTO. I am really excited that we will kick off the summit with Matt as he has deep experience and knowledge of the space and a compelling vision for the future. In his 23+ years at Qualcomm, he has been instrumental in taking many technologies to the market that we take for granted today. I had a chance to catch-up with Matt to give you a preview of our discussion at the summit next week.

MFF: The chipset roadmap gives us a sense of what new devices will emerge from the mobile platform. What are some of the things on the horizon that you are excited about, and that developers should pay attention to?

Matt: We continue to see a tremendous amount of innovation in smartphones. In the next 5 years, analysts estimate that nearly 8 billion smartphones will be sold worldwide. That amount is larger than the world’s population! With such scale, there’s no doubt that mobile will continue to be a focal point for technology R&D — with major advancements not only in the chipset feature set, but also in the evolution of software, and mobile networks. Many of the things we foresaw a few years back are already in commercial devices, things like LTE Advanced, Ultra HD, wireless charging, surround sound, and computational photography.

Moving forward, I’m pretty excited about further advancements in LTE, things like LTE in unlicensed spectrum, and LTE Direct. These technologies will make mobile networks much more capable and useful. On the device side, we’ll see more low-power processing and sensor technologies, and new developments in computer vision that will improve the context awareness capabilities of mobile devices.

And I’m personally passionate about the developments we’ll see in the field of machine learning — the evolution of processor platforms that mimic the way the human brain thinks and sees. This will be a game changer — since we finally will be able to “teach” our machines instead of simply “programming” them.

MFF: We know that rising data consumption is a challenging issue for mobile operators worldwide. Looking out over the next 5 years, what kinds of solutions do you anticipate? And how big a part will unlicensed spectrum play?

Matt: Although the numbers vary depending on the region, we continue to see solid growth in data demand. According to the CTIA, mobile network operators in the U.S. saw a 120% year-over-year (YOY) increase in data traffic in 2013, compared to a 69% YOY increase in 2012. In emerging regions, we are still in the early days of smartphone adoption, so we should expect further increases in data demand, as people adopt more advanced mobile devices.

We anticipated a day in which networks will have to deal with a thousand times more data traffic than they handle today. We called this the 1000x data challenge. To solve it, our industry has implemented a range of strategies. Of course spectrum is critical. We’ll need to squeeze more out of existing spectrum and we’ll need to find more of it. That’s going to involve taking advantage of multiple access schemes, including licensed, unlicensed, and shared access.

We’re also working on continuing the evolution and enhancement of LTE, including carrier aggregation strategies. Other network efficiencies will be achieved through advancements in 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi technologies. Another key strategy is network densification. We’re working to beef up mobile network infrastructure with the deployment of advanced small cells.

We’ll need all of these tools to address the continuing rise in demand for mobile data, because the fact is that people in every part of the world love their mobile devices, which is a pretty exciting challenge for our industry.

MFF: Mobile is changing so many industry verticals — health, auto, retail, energy, and more. Which verticals are you the most excited about, and why?

Matt: The huge scale of the mobile industry and the rapid design cycles associated with it are driving a tremendous amount of technology innovation. And those breakthroughs are now driving innovation in a growing number of other industry sectors. The components and capabilities that have been invented, integrated, refined, and dramatically cost reduced within modern smartphones are now poised to revolutionize and enable whole new categories of devices, sensors — and machines.

I’m particularly excited about how these mobile innovations will accelerate the evolution of robotics. Drones and robots are taking a lot of the technology developed for smartphones. Things like wireless connectivity, image stabilization, computer vision, precise outdoor and indoor location, and low power processing, are all now contributing to the evolution of robotics as well. And the scale of deployment of those technologies is making robots much more affordable as well. Today we can find hobby drones that sell for less than $1,000.

As part of our R&D effort at Qualcomm we’re building experimental robots that can learn to perform some menial tasks without prior programming, things like sorting toys and organizing them in bins. And all running on the same Snapdragon processors that power many of the most popular smartphones today. It’s exciting to see how smartphone technology is accelerating the development of general-purpose robots and drones, and I’m grateful to have a front row seat, not only as a witness that evolution, but also as a participant in the robotics revolution.

MFF: The “Internet of Things” continues to make headlines and holds great promise, but the growth has been slow due interoperability, security, regulatory, and other issues. What will it take to move past these issues and see the growth rate graph take the anticipated hockey stick shape?

Matt: Everything around us is becoming intelligent and connected, changing the way we interact with the world: phones, tablets, cars, appliances, and health devices. We use the term “Internet of Everything” (IoE) because not only “things” are getting connected, but also places and people.

The IoE is still in its early days, but the ecosystem is coming together to solve some of the key issues preventing the full realization of its promise. Until recently, most IoE products and services have existed in silos, as vertical solutions — without the capability to connect and interact with each other. The challenge is, how to create a horizontal, secure, interoperable environment. We believe that AllJoyn is key solution for moving the industry in the right direction. AllJoyn is an open, universal, and programmable software and services framework, initially developed by Qualcomm Innovation Center and now hosted by the AllSeen Alliance.

Qualcomm backs the AllSeen Alliance as it drives the AllJoyn open source project forward, as the common language for the Internet of Everything. The AllSeen ecosystem consists of a broad representation of cross industry leaders looking to enhance AllJoyn via open source contributions, and to commercially deploy smart connected devices that can discover, connect and communicate with each other across brands and device categories.

The consortium now counts more than 60 members, including many big names in technology and consumer electronics. This level of support increases our confidence about the future. I think we’re close to reaching a tipping point in the development of a truly interoperable IoE.

Hope you enjoyed the insights.

We look forward to seeing you next week.

Kind regards,

Chetan Sharma