Qualcomm Smart Speaker-Dedicated SoCs Are Here – Targets The Smart Speaker Market

Qualcomm has just announced major news in the past couple of hours. Qualcomm has just announced a new lineup of SoCs, namely, the QCS407, QCS405, QCS404 and QCS403, dedicated towards smart speakers and digital assistants.

With these new SoCs, Qualcomm is planning to dominate the smart speaker market. Reports from last year suggest that the demand for smart speakers is increasing, with Google and Amazon battling out for the top spot. They went as far as to say that over the next two years, the smart speaker market is expected to grow by more than 2.25 times its current size. And if that doesn’t seem good enough, just remember that the snowball only gets bigger moving forward.

These new SoCs from Qualcomm come in quad-core and dual-core variants. Qualcomm would be adding a ton of audio features on these SoCs to enable hi-fidelity audio paired with technologies such as Dolby’s Atmos. dts-X, Qualcomm’s in-house aptX adaptive engine and DDFA amplifier solution. However, these SoCs wouldn’t solely be dedicated towards smart speakers only as press renders suggest that these SoCs would come with audio, display and camera engines as well for manufacturers who plan to expand their capabilities with their smart speaker, soundbar or device.

Qualcomm is also betting on its AI technology and power efficiency here. And since AI has been a prominent area for Qualcomm to apply their R&D teams at, we would expect some impressive technologies from their Snapdragon lineup of SoCs being ported over here.

Qualcomm hasn’t revealed many details yet or any ongoing developments with the SoCs yet. However, with Qualcomm now officially in the race, OEMs such as Xiaomi and others wouldn’t have to go for custom-built SoCs anymore as AI radically expands over the next few years, making it easier for manufacturers to not online tech space, but the automotive industry to jump in with ease.