5G Factor: CES 2024 Takeaways – Automobiles Shine

In this episode of The 5G Factor, our series that focuses on all things 5G, the IoT, and the ecosystem as a whole, I'm joined by my colleague and fellow analyst, Olivier Blanchard, for a look at the top 5G developments and what's going on that caught our eye at CES 2024 such as Qualcomm's Snapdragon Digital Chassis innovations and Stellantis, Blackberry, and AWS collaboration focused on advancing virtual cockpit development. 

Our conversation spotlighted:

Qualcomm Snapdragon Digital Chassis Innovations. Qualcomm spotlighted the company's ecosystem-wide momentum and vital position as a key partner of the automotive industry, demonstrating maturity, breadth, and breakthrough innovations across its Snapdragon Digital Chassis portfolio. This includes Snapdragon Digital Chassis' ongoing market momentum with a full suite of products for Gen AI-enabled digital cockpits, connected car technologies, connected services, advanced driver assistance, and automated driving systems. We examine why we see Qualcomm meeting the growing demand for programmable and highly customizable solutions firmly backed by a diverse software and OS ecosystem that support all tiers of mobility platforms, including the fact that more than 350 million vehicles are on the road today using Snapdragon Digital Chassis solutions. 

Qualcomm Underscores Variety of New Snapdragon Automotive Capabilities. Qualcomm promoted its Snapdragon Ride Platform which is comprised of the company's scalable and customizable automated driving system-on-chip (SoC) family that is designed to help global automakers and Tier-1 suppliers build efficient automated driving (AD) solutions now enhanced by a comprehensive and scalable AD stack and perception solution, targeting Active Safety to L2+/L3 functions. Plus, Snapdragon Ride Flex SoC, Snapdragon Car-to-Cloud, and Snapdragon Digital Chassis SoCs for Two-wheelers further illuminated Qualcomm's portfolio acumen. We delve into why we view the entire set of Snapdragon automotive-related updates as fortifying Qualcomm's ability to directly influence the industry's rapid evolution to software-defined vehicle (SDV) architectures. 

Stellantis, BlackBerry, and AWS Team Up for Virtual Cockpits. Stellantis, BlackBerry QNX, and AWS have teamed up to unveil the trio's virtual cockpit for automobiles. Part of the group's Virtual Engineering Workbench (VEW), the platform is designed to accelerate the delivery of cutting-edge car technology to customers. The key to this acceleration lies in the utilization of QNX Hypervisor in the cloud from BlackBerry, which functions as a virtual lab for developing car controls and systems. We assess why the platform's ability to create realistic versions of car controls and systems, emulating the behavior of a real car without needing to make disruptive changes to the main software, can significantly decrease development cycles from months to as a little as 24 hours, further fueling SDV innovation.