Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 820 processor has found quite a few takers in the international smartphone space but is yet to find a place among Indian OEMs so far. This is all set to change now with a new report which states that there a couple of local manufacturers looking to use the chipset for their products.
This is big news, given Indian OEMs usually don’t utilize high-end SoCs like the Snapdragon 820 due to the dominance of affordable handsets in the country. Sunil Lalvani, Qualcomm’s India head, has confirmed the development but did not venture to name the players in question. He claims there is a lot of interest in the new CPU and talks are currently taking place with a few brands.
Lalvani went on to assert that consumers in India are becoming more demanding. He believes this trend will help Snapdragon 820 handsets gain traction in the nation. According to him, Indian OEMs want to move up the value chain in order to take on Chinese brands on a global scale. He gave the Snapdragon 810-sporting Yu Yutopia as an example of this change.
Given it’s still early days for these talks to come to fruition, the recently launched Xiaomi Mi 5 will probably be the first handset featuring the processor to hit India. No price details have been announced yet, but the phone starts at CNY 1999 which roughly translates to about Rs 21000. Its launch could encourage local firms like Micromax and Intex to launch their own mid-range device with flagship specs.
Tim McDonough, the senior vice-president of marketing at Qualcomm, told the Indian Express that a minimum of 100 designs were at present being developed for the first wave of Snapdragon 820 offerings. 6 have already been outed including smartphones like the LG G5 and Samsung Galaxy S7.