During his keynote presentation at CES 2018 in Las Vegas, Qualcomm president Cristiano Amon discussed the future of 5G, predicting that flagship 5G smartphones will hit shelves in 2019 and overtake the market quickly. The rollout “will occur ‘very fast’ because of 5G’s 30x improvement in latency, which lets phone makers keep the price of phones down by offloading phone memory to the cloud,” reports TWICE. The presentation suggested that “the 5G transition is going to be faster than the 4G transition, and it will create a ‘massive’ Internet of Things, enabling new business models and making autonomous vehicles a reality.”

The capabilities of 5G will enable corporations to move IT to the cloud and will make significant changes to sectors including infrastructure, transportation, automotive and medical.

Qualcomm “debuted a new Bluetooth SoC aimed at truly wireless headsets during its keynote,” adds Gadgets 360. The company also announced “an expansion of capabilities and product applications for the Qualcomm Mesh Networking Platform and Reference Design, wider support for the Qualcomm Smart Audio Platform, and developments in the automotive space.”

According to Qualcomm, its low-power Bluetooth SoC QCC5100 series “is designed to help manufacturers develop a new generation of compact, feature-rich, wireless earbuds, hearables and headsets.” The “series is engineered to reduce power consumption by up to 65 percent for both voice calls and music streaming, compared to previous single-chip Bluetooth audio solutions.”

In regards to its Mesh Networking Platform and Reference Design, the company explained that it “is enabling, through the integration of Qualcomm Aqstic and Microsoft’s digital assistant Cortana, leading voice recognition capabilities in the platform to create virtually seamless voice-driven experiences in the home.”

Qualcomm is also expanding the range of products that support the platform “to include smart speakers, smoke detectors, security systems, and smart bulbs where manufacturers are leveraging the mesh networking platform to help create new and better-connected experiences.”