Qualcomm may be struggling with providing supplies of chips but it doesn’t stop with research and development. We have been featuring a lot of good things from the company. Just recently, we learned that it is working on a Qualcomm gaming phone for Snapdragon Insiders. The Snapdragon 888 Plus 5G mobile processor was also announced. We also noted that Qualcomm’s old Snapdragon Wear chips are capable of running new Wear OS. New processors will be introduced in the near future as the company has started working on Snapdragon Wear chips for smartwatches.
Qualcomm is further expanding the wearables segment with new products. It has been making new platform investments. There is also the Qualcomm Wearables Ecosystem Accelerator Program.
Qualcomm has proudly shared the good news that it has reached over 40 million Snapdragon Wear shipments. That’s the number of Snapdragon Wear-powered smartwatches and health-fitness trackers out there. The SoCs for wearables have been tried and tested by dozens of OEMs and brands from Arm to Fossil, BBK, and OPPO among others.
No doubt the wearables business is growing especially since last year when the pandemic hit. Because there is a need and demand, Qualcomm Technologies’ is increasing Snapdragon Wear investments. This includes introducing new Snapdragon Wear platforms that may be used across different segments of smartwatches from kids to adults to seniors and even for pets.
The new Snapdragon Wear platforms won’t be just for Wear OS. Qualcomm is also looking to deliver and respond to the needs of customers using different OSs. Qualcomm Technologies Senior Director & Global Head for Smart Wearables Pankaj Kedia said, “We envision a hyper segmented world of wearables. We believe Qualcomm Technologies has an important role to play to accelerate this reality by bringing together our platforms and investments to the ecosystem.”
The company also just announced the Qualcomm Wearables Ecosystem Accelerator Program. It’s a new effort that will be enable OEMs and developers to build the future of wearables. This ecosystem innovation will connect “wearable hardware and software technology providers, component vendors and system integrators with consumer and enterprise OEMs, ODMs, mobile operators and platform providers”.
The program has a major goal: to accelerate the adoption of wearables and reduce development time through building collaborative relationships across the wearables value chain. Qualcomm aims to offer assistance to ecosystem members that want to optimize solutions with the Snapdragon Wear Platform. With this move, many groups will be able to adapt innovations quickly to their products and be able to commercialize them.
Qualcomm wants to provide expert support to help fast track innovation. This way, most OEMs can see increased business opportunities, faster time to commercialization, and be able to produce more intelligent and connected wearables.