Chipset maker Qualcomm trains its sights on Mena mobile education

The project is in the initial phases and work is beginning primarily in the Middle East and North Africa, where most governments are keen on investing in online education.

Visitors at the Qualcomm stall during the GITEX Technology Week held at Dubai World Trade Centre in Dubai. Pawan Singh / The National
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Qualcomm is moving into mobile education to offset slowing smartphone sales by promoting the development of applications for the sector, and it is beginning with the Middle East and North Africa region. The chipset manufacturer, whose Snapdragon processors can be found in many smartphones and tablets across the market, recently reported slower revenues this quarter amid a slowdown in global sales of smartphones.

International Data Corporation (IDC) is predicting the smartphone market will grow at a rate of 19 per cent this year, compared with 39 per cent last year. Qualcomm is also looking at the transport sector and smart cities as new opportunities for growth on top of its mobile education initiative.

“These new initiatives are ways for us to grow. We have achieved a lot of success and built a technology with the biggest platform [mobile],” said Ziad Matar, senior director of business development at Qualcomm. “We’ve been here for five years and we have a great network infrastructure, particularly in Dubai and the GCC.

“We have all the boxes ticked and now we can take advantage of that. The first thing is to understand the business model for education around the world.”

One of Qualcomm’s main objectives is to help build out the mobile ecosystem. Since the company owns numerous technology patents revolving around 3G and 4G, it makes money on every handset that utilises these technologies, even if they do not use Qualcomm parts. Building out the ecosystem and encouraging more applications and handsets is in its interest.

“Their continued success depends on mobile data. They’re interested in emerging markets generally as developed markets mature. Clearly China is at the forefront, it is the biggest emerging market in their mind. Somewhere behind that they look at India and the Middle East and North Africa region,” said Matthew Reed, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media.

The project is still in the initial phases and work is beginning primarily in the Mena region, where most governments are keen on investing in online education. The company is currently identifying key stakeholders in each country before coming up with a strategy suited for the platform.

In places like the GCC, where many students already have a tablet or can afford to buy one, a bring-your-own-device model can be adopted. But somewhere like Egypt, where 18 million out of the 20 million students currently attend government-run schools, a standard government distributed tablet will be more suitable said Mr Matar.

“The technology will be the same, our job is to line up the channels and create the right relationships in the market and provide the blueprint. We can’t do this overnight, but it will make us a lot of revenue,” said Mr Matar.

In the highly competitive silicon chip sector, companies like Qualcomm, Intel and GlobalFoundries are hard pressed to get their chips into as many devices as possible.

“The last three to four years have been particularly tough on the semiconductor industry, the electronics market is not doing well,” said Niju V, director of automation and electronics at Frost & Sullivan. “But there are more systems being built, we will have billions of new gadgets that need application specific chips.”

These applications, such as mobile education or mobile health, will require different chipsets, something that Qualcomm is hoping to provide.

thamid@thenational.ae