According to reports from Business Standard, memory price inflation has already affected the sub-₹25,000 smartphone segment, with Sumit Sonal, head of marketing at Qualcomm India, confirming that the entire segment below ₹25,000 has moved up due to rising memory costs. This price pressure is forcing chipset manufacturers to reconsider how advanced AI features can be implemented across different price segments while maintaining device affordability. As reported by Business Standard, Motorola's head of marketing for Asia-Pacific, Shivam Ranjan, confirmed that the company is experiencing a memory super cycle where demand has outstripped supply, primarily due to the AI boom. This supply-demand imbalance is creating significant cost pressures across the entire smartphone ecosystem.
As reported by Business Standard, Qualcomm expects technologies associated with its flagship Snapdragon 8-series processors to reach its 7-series, 6-series and 5-series chipsets over the next few years. Sonal explained that improvements in smaller AI models could help bring agentic AI features to smartphones with lower-tier processors, as these optimized models can run on less powerful hardware. The company is focusing on gradual capability migration rather than rapid deployment to ensure ecosystem maturity and market stability. According to Business Standard, smaller AI models could reduce the computing resources needed to run AI features on smartphones, making them suitable for lower-tier processors. The company is letting the ecosystem mature before these capabilities can move down to lower-tier chipsets.
According to recent reports, Qualcomm has a clear focus on AI inference rather than AI training systems, where NVIDIA maintains a significant lead. The company argues that power use, memory efficiency, cost, and performance per watt will matter more as AI agents handle more tasks. This strategic positioning has gained momentum with major customer commitments, including multi-generation deals with Meta for Qualcomm data center central processing units and multi-generation agreements with Amazon Web Services for custom AI data center silicon and optical connectivity. The first focus centers on AI inference, providing Qualcomm with access to markets that once sat outside its core business.
As reported by Business Standard, Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon platforms emphasize AI agents rather than simple chatbot tasks, with the company's Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 targeting workloads that require strong central processing units, fast memory, local models, security, and reliable network access. According to Business Standard, agentic AI systems are designed to carry out multi-step tasks with less direct user input than conventional assistants, but their implementation on affordable devices will depend on hardware capabilities and software ecosystem maturity. The company's Oryon CPU architecture plays a central role across phones, smart glasses, PCs, cars, and data centers, with agent workloads requiring much stronger CPUs than traditional AI accelerators.
According to recent reports, Qualcomm's AI strategy extends far beyond mobile devices, with the company now viewing cars, robots, industrial machines, glasses, earbuds, and other connected products as AI endpoints. The company has expanded its work in robotics and plans to acquire PickNik, while focusing on industrial automation, autonomous machines, retail, agriculture, and energy. Qualcomm completed its acquisition of Modular in July 2026, adding software technology for generative and agentic AI, and expanded its relationship with Hugging Face to support AI across devices, edge systems, and Dragonfly data centers. In fiscal Q3 2026, Qualcomm turned in USD 9.95 billion in revenue with automotive and Internet of Things revenue within QCT reflecting 28% year-on-year growth. Looking ahead, non-handset revenue, including data center sales, is expected to grow by more than 60% in fiscal 2027 after fiscal 2026's 24% growth.
