Qualcomm confirms that 5G phones priced under Rs 10,000 will be available in 2024.
Affordable 5G phones will be knocking on our doors in 2024 when major chipmakers finally have the large-scale technology available to power $100 (roughly Rs 8,300) phones. We haven’t really seen the 5G phone market move into the affordable segment because the cost of 5G chips has made it difficult to raise those prices.
But Qualcomm has confirmed that its new 5G chip for entry-level phones will be rolled out in the coming months. The chip giant’s update matches the timeline that Savi Soin, president of Qualcomm India, had shared with us at the Indian Mobile Congress 2023 (IMC 2023) in Delhi last year.
The company has mostly put its resources into the flagship and mid-range segment to satisfy the industry’s 5G demand, but it’s time for volumes to pick up and the most affordable 5G phones are paramount.
The company has integrated AI applications into its chip thanks to the NPU, but we don’t expect any advancements from Snapdragon chips coming to the budget segment. The main focus of these phones is to provide fast internet speeds and support higher latency and range, two of the biggest challenges of 4G networks.
Talking about 5G budget phones is incomplete without the Indian market in the picture, and it’s clear that the likes of Qualcomm are eyeing the country and also finding partners that can source the hardware to fulfill their reference designs for the phones. this area.
What Qualcomm has confirmed at Mobile World Congress 2024 (MWC 2024) in Barcelona just reiterates the position and plan that has been in the works for the past couple of years. We can’t wait to see how the budget 5G phone market will shape up and whether millions of users will eventually be allowed to upgrade their 4G phones now that network availability is not a limitation.
