Chipmaker Qualcomm India’s revenue jumped 23% in FY18 driven by a demand surge for phones in the world’s second-most-populous nation where the telecom industry is transiting rapidly to 4G data technology after the entry of Reliance Jio.
In a recent report Economic Times reported that the San Diego-based company powered more than half the total smartphones sold in India and posted sales of Rs 5,426 crore locking in a net profit of Rs 518 crore in FY18, financials sourced from research platform Tofler showed.
While the company’s growth slowed down from a year ago when it grew 39%, it has nearly doubled sales and profit over the past three years.
Rajen Vagadia, country manager of Qualcomm India in an interaction with ET stated that India is a growing market for smartphones and the telecom carriers have also rapidly adopted 4G, which has transitioned this market totally from 3G to 4G and now is moving the 2G to 4G. He further stated that this transition has been fuelled by solutions that Qualcomm provided, including the explosive growth of the Jio 4G feature phone at one end of the spectrum while their partners like Xiaomi have brought premium tier Snapdragon 845 at affordable prices.
Qualcomm has been working closely with the carriers in India helping bring features such as voice calls over a 4G LTE network and voice over wifi for Indian consumers. The chipmaker said most companies were looking to launch major global technologies concurrently in India, making the country the first or second market for such roll outs.
