Qualcomm ramps up 5G with French research and development centre

Qualcomm has announced plans to open a new 5G research and development (R&D) centre in France to work on the future evolution of 5G and beyond.

The new internal R&D facility joins Qualcomm Incorporated’s R&D network and the company says it will play a key role in Qualcomm employees driving the development of 5G locally, regionally and globally.

Qualcomm’s first office in Europe was opened in France over 20 years ago and the company believes that a new 5G R&D facility – building on existing facilities in Paris Region and Sophia Antipolis that have been active for more than 20 years – strengthens its relationship with both France and Europe, which it says is fast becoming an epicentre for technology R&D leadership.

“France already has a leading technical engineering infrastructure in place, so it is a natural fit for this new 5G R&D hub,” said John Smee, vice-president, engineering at Qualcomm Technologies. “The 5G R&D team will be working on advanced systems engineering to help define the future of 5G and beyond – and the new centre is a tremendous opportunity for the individuals involved and for the company.”

The new centre will be colocated in Lannion in Brittany and Issy-Les-Moulineaux in the Paris Region. Lannion is a centre for telecoms engineering excellence and a European technology hub. Qualcomm has been working with the French government to augment Lannion as a leading telecoms engineering hub to retain top talent and technological expertise in 5G.

And it is in this area that Qualcomm has hit the accelerator pedal recently. Just weeks ago, the company launched the Snapdragon 480 5G mobile platform, said to be the first four-series mobile platform equipped with 5G, offering access to global next-generation 5G connectivity and what Qualcomm calls “series-defying” performance to power in-demand productivity and entertainment experiences.

The new platform has a CPU with running capability up to 2.0GHz to deliver up to 100% performance improvement in CPU and GPU, and up to 70% artificial intelligence performance improvement compared with the previous generation.

Remarking on his forthcoming appointment to replace Steve Mollenkopf as CEO, Cristiano Amon said Qualcomm had been at the forefront of innovation for decades and he would aim to maintain this position going forward.

“In addition to driving the expansion of 5G into mainstream devices and beyond mobile, Qualcomm is set to play a key role in the digital transformation of numerous industries as our technologies become essential to connecting everything to the cloud,” he said. “The need for our solutions has never been more pronounced and our leadership position has never been more evident.”