Budget 5G phones are going to knock on our doors in 2024 as major chip makers finally have the tech available at scale to power phones in the $100 (Rs 8,300 approx) bracket. We haven’t really seen the 5G phone market enter the affordable segment as the cost of 5G chips have made it hard to pull off those prices.
But Qualcomm has confirmed that its new 5G chip for entry-level phones will be rolled out in the coming months. The update from the chip giant matches the timeline that Savi Soin, President, Qualcomm India, had shared with us at the Indian Mobile Congress 2023 (IMC 2023) in Delhi last year.
The company has mostly spent its resources on the flagship and mid-range segment to satiate its 5G demand from the industry but it is time the volumes pick up and for that affordable 5G phones are paramount.
The company has integrated AI applications into its chip thanks to the NPU but we don’t expect that level of advancement in the Snapdragon chips that roll out for the budget segment. The main focus of these phones will be to deliver high-speed internet speeds and support higher latency and range, two of the biggest challenges posed by 4G networks.
Talking about 5G budget phones is incomplete without having the Indian market in the picture and it is evident that the likes of Qualcomm will have the country in its sights and also line up partners who can pull off the hardware that satisfies their reference design for phones in this range.
What Qualcomm has confirmed at the Mobile World Congress 2024 (MWC 2024) in Barcelona only reiterates its stance and planning that has been in the works for the last couple of years. We can’t wait to see how the budget 5G phone market shapes up and whether it finally allows millions of users to upgrade from their 4G phones now that the network availability is not a constraint.
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