By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
This week Qualcomm and STMicroelectronics announced that they’ve entered into a strategic collaboration combining and integrating STMicroelectronics’ STM32 microcontroller platform with Qualcomm’s Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/Thread combo SoC. For Qualcomm the agreement in principle opens up for an addressable market of a staggering 100,000 current STM32 customers.
Wireless IoT is perhaps the most fragmented and unruly market in tech right now with thousands of manufacturers and developers – but now Qualcomm and STMicroelectronics may have discovered a route through the IoT jungle. As of this week Qualcomm and STMicroelectronics will be collaborating to bring wireless connectivity and MCU leadership potentially to an ecosystem of one million plus IoT developers.
The linkup could be the most direct route for Qualcomm to take additional market share in wireless IoT – a promising growth market by volume but also a challenging segment in terms of margins and profits. STMicroelectronics and its vast number of clients will benefit from including ready-made Qualcomm Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/Thread SoC integration into the ST developer ecosystem.
Qualcomm says the integration will allow simple, fast, and cost-effective design of next generation industrial and consumer IoT applications augmented by edge AI. “Through this collaboration, developers will enjoy seamless connectivity software integration into STM32 general-purpose MCUs, including software toolkits, facilitating quick and broad adoption via ST’s world-wide sales and distributor channels.”
“There is no doubt that time to market for IoT vendors will be shortened significantly through our collaboration with ST, also because our collaboration among other items includes the development of a pre-certified, self-contained wireless IoT module. Products will be available in Q1 2025,” says Shishir Gupta, Senior Director Product Management at Qualcomm.
According to IoT Analytics (and ENEA) the IoT market is forecast to continue to grow at a CAGR of 21% – at least until the end of next year and likely beyond – with Wi-Fi taking approximately a third of the market share. In numbers that means IoT connections (nearly all of it wireless) has been forecast to reach about 31 billion by end of next year with Wi-Fi representing 10 billion connections, many in combination with Bluetooth and other short-range technologies. Also see the chart below.
/Claus.
