Snapdragon has evolved from a brand known primarily among tech enthusiasts into a globally-recognized consumer brand. What does that tell us about how people value technology, particularly as we move deeper into the AI era?
I think the fundamental key lies in connecting what technology actually does with how it meaningfully enhances human lives. That is how you truly demonstrate the enduring value of a brand, and it has been central to our global strategy with Snapdragon. Rather than focusing purely on technical specifications, clock speeds, or raw gigahertz, we focus our narrative on what our technology enables people to accomplish, whether that means empowering their personal creativity, boosting workplace productivity, or allowing them to pursue their deepest passions. By shifting the narrative toward human empowerment, we bring both the underlying technology and the brand itself to life.
This human-centric approach has enabled us to build not only widespread brand awareness but also deeper consumer understanding, preference, and emotional affinity. Consumer expectations are escalating rapidly, both in terms of what individuals demand from their devices and how they expect technology to be integrated into their daily routines.
Consumers no longer wish to be passive users of technology; they want to participate and actively engage with it. The more useful and intuitive technology proves to be in everyday life, the more eagerly people will embrace it and appreciate its true value. Ultimately, the benchmark for brand success in the AI era is defined by how seamlessly technology elevates the daily human experience.
A brand like Snapdragon does not exist in isolation; it powers a massive ecosystem of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), software platforms, and network carriers. How crucial is ecosystem collaboration in ensuring that the end-consumer experience truly reflects the brand promise?
Ecosystem collaboration is absolutely paramount. It is essential to delivering on our brand promise every single day. Our partners help us deliver the rich experiences enabled by Snapdragon hardware and software, but equally importantly, they help communicate the intrinsic value of those experiences directly to end consumers. While we can tell that narrative independently, the message becomes exponentially more compelling when we articulate it jointly alongside our global partners.
For instance, when a consumer considers purchasing a flagship Samsung Galaxy Z Fold or driving a VinFast smart electric vehicle powered by Snapdragon platforms, we want them to immediately understand how our underlying technology enlivens their user experience. That collaborative narrative forms the core of our partner storytelling and explains why those relationships are so vital to our long-term success.
We have successfully created a world where consumers shopping for a device across almost any category naturally ask whether it features Snapdragon inside, or feel an immediate sense of quality and confidence upon seeing the Snapdragon branding. Our intention is never to overshadow our OEM partners, but rather to complement and elevate their offerings. Sustaining brand preference for Snapdragon chips is a complex challenge, but it confirms that our collaborative ecosystem model is operating at the highest level.
Snapdragon has expanded beyond traditional tech conversations into gaming, content creation, and global sports through iconic partnerships, like with Manchester United. Why is it essential for a semiconductor brand to claim space in these cultural and lifestyle domains?
A strong, resonant brand possesses the power to influence both end-consumer purchasing decisions and the architectural choices device manufacturers make. To build a brand that truly lasts, connecting with popular culture is an essential imperative. Traditional advertising alone is simply insufficient. We must actively engage with people’s passions, and global sports represent one of the most powerful connectors on the planet.
Our flagship partnership with Manchester United, a football club with a global fanbase exceeding one billion followers, offers us an unprecedented platform to share the Snapdragon story with passionate audiences across key markets such as Vietnam, China, the UK, and the US. When fans realize that Snapdragon powers the high-performance experiences they love, they begin to prefer it in their next device. In turn, device manufacturers choose Snapdragon because they recognize that their customers actively prefer it. It operates as a mutually-reinforcing flywheel.
We are exceptionally pleased with the global progress of the Snapdragon brand. Internationally, our aided brand awareness has reached 56 per cent globally, reflecting the growing recognition of Snapdragon around the world. This momentum has also earned Snapdragon a place among Kantar BrandZ’s Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands. These historic results reflect the deep investment and strategic vision behind our brand, manifested in growing worldwide recognition and rising demand from device manufacturers.
Vietnamese users are exceptionally passionate about sports, mobile gaming, high-quality photography, and now AI. Where do you see the greatest potential for Snapdragon to make a lasting impact on the user experience here?
Vietnam presents an extraordinary landscape across all these dynamic verticals. In mobile gaming, we work intimately with all major OEM partners to deliver desktop-grade gaming experiences directly on mobile devices, allowing Vietnamese gamers to feel the raw power and optimization of Snapdragon platforms firsthand. Concurrently, we are continually advancing computational photography and mobile camera architectures, enabling device makers to dramatically elevate photo and video capture quality across the full lifecycle of content creation, editing, and instant sharing.
In the realm of AI, we are pioneering on-device AI capabilities across smartphones and PCs. On-device AI processing ensures high speed, low latency, enhanced privacy, and strict data security. Working closely with our partners, our goal is to translate complex technical capabilities into practical, everyday benefits that resonate with local users.
Furthermore, Vietnam’s youthful demographic represents a vital focus for our marketing strategy, and we need to understand their unique expectations. Engaging these younger generations requires communicating the tangible benefits of technology in ways that mirror their lifestyle habits, artistic aspirations, and daily digital interactions.
Vietnamese consumers know Snapdragon best on smartphones, but the launch of the Snapdragon X Series positions the brand at the forefront of AI PCs, alongside growing momentum in the automotive industry. How do you maintain a consistent brand identity across such distinct product categories?
Extending Snapdragon into the PC category represents a completely natural evolution. In fact, building brand equity in the PC market offers an even greater opportunity than in smartphones, as computer buyers have historically paid much closer attention to the internal components and processors powering their systems.
However, the PC sector relies on a distinct go-to-market structure. To communicate the value of Snapdragon effectively all the way to the point of sale, we must collaborate not only with device manufacturers but also with retail partners, distributors, and commercial sales channels. This demands a more active and visible presence in retail environments than was previously required in mobile markets, offering a valuable channel to deepen consumer engagement while presenting a fresh strategic challenge.
In the automotive industry, consumer awareness varies across regions. In China, for example, Snapdragon enjoys high brand recognition, with leading electric vehicle makers actively highlighting Snapdragon cockpits and connectivity as key selling points in their showrooms. While automotive brand building is relatively new for us, we are making tremendous strides forward worldwide through joint marketing initiatives with luxury automakers such as BMW, Cadillac, and Volvo. Maintaining brand consistency across smartphones, PCs, and smart vehicles ultimately requires adapting our messaging to match how consumers discover, evaluate, and purchase products within each specific industry.
As devices become more intelligent and personalized, and with Vietnam rapidly transitioning into 5G and AI, what does the next chapter of Snapdragon look like for consumers globally and locally?
The next chapter for Snapdragon is defined by the rise of agentic AI. As the technology transitions from generative AI, which primarily responds to prompts, to agentic AI capable of taking proactive action alongside users and on their behalf, Snapdragon is positioned as the definitive platform built to power this new era. AI will shift from being a tool for asking questions and receiving answers to becoming a genuinely helpful, autonomous personal assistant.
This architectural shift will fundamentally transform human-device interaction. Rather than relying heavily on traditional mobile applications, users will increasingly interact with personal AI agents via voice and natural inputs. Snapdragon platforms are specifically engineered to supply the intense computational power and efficiency needed to deliver these frictionless agentic experiences.
To illustrate, if a user interacts with smart glasses, those glasses must process what the user sees and hears in real time to carry out tasks seamlessly. That requires Qualcomm to engineer Snapdragon hardware tiny enough to fit into lightweight eyewear, powerful enough to execute complex agentic workflows, and efficient enough to provide all-day battery life. Building Snapdragon for the future demands a balance of high performance, power efficiency, on-device privacy, and robust security as AI models become smaller and localized.
Our newly-announced Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 platform exemplifies this vision, featuring major architectural updates across the NPU, CPU, and GPU. These advances are engineered to power demanding agentic AI workloads while continuing to push the envelope in mobile gaming, professional imaging, and immersive audio. Ultimately, this transformation reflects changing human behavior, and our mission is to ensure Snapdragon technology empowers people in this new era.
