Unlocking innovations for global impact: The power of technology standardization

When you stream 4K video on your smartphone, take a crystal-clear call on your favorite wireless earbuds, or share your 5G connection as a hotspot for friends who lack connectivity, there's a core enabler at work: global technology standards. They ensure your device connects to today's 5G and Wi-Fi 7 - and tomorrow's AI-native 6G and Wi-Fi 8 wireless networks - pairs effortlessly with Bluetooth accessories, plays high-definition video streams, and runs AI-powered applications efficiently across different devices and operating systems.

Technology standards are the foundation of our vision for intelligent computing everywhere. At Qualcomm, we view standards as catalysts for three foundational pillars of modern technology: connectivity, compute and intelligence. By aligning common frameworks around the latest technologies, global standards enable these capabilities to be implemented consistently across smartphones, PCs, cars, glasses, wearables and broader IoT systems. This consistency helps ensure interoperability, accelerates development and supports the diversification needed to bring that vision to life.

As the VP of Technical Standards at Qualcomm Europe, I lead a global team across 20 countries, working in areas including connectivity, multimedia, AI, automotive, semiconductor standards and more. In this blog post, I'll build on our earlier discussions on the value of standards and explore how they continue to shape innovation and scale. I'll highlight some of the key areas we're actively working on today, including cellular, Wi-Fi, video and audio coding, and memory, where our leadership remains central to driving progress across the ecosystem.

Why technology standards matter

As smartphones and digital ecosystems become more relevant, their complexity continues to grow. Technology standards play a critical role in managing this complexity, for example in these several key areas:

• Cross-device scalability: Standards ensure that devices (both hardware and software) from different vendors work seamlessly together, enabling global reach and consistent user experiences.
• Faster time to market: Streamlined development and well-defined certification processes allow new technologies and features to reach users more quickly.
• Lower development cost: Standards offer a common foundation that enables OEMs and ecosystem partners to streamline product design and avoid reinventing core technologies, ultimately optimizing resource investments.
• Ecosystem growth: Open, consensus-driven standards foster innovation, expand opportunities and help ensure a level playing field for all participants.

Driving widespread adoption of new technologies

Our technology leadership in transformative technologies is built on decades of groundbreaking work in connectivity, compute and AI. To turn early-stage innovations into real-world solutions, standardization is often a key step - such as 5G NR through 3GPP and LPDDR5 through JEDEC - before they can be widely commercialized. These standardization efforts are beneficial for enabling consistent, optimized experiences across industries and geographies.

Our contributions to global standards have shaped and advanced the technology landscape in several areas such as:

• Cellular: From the early days of CDMA to LTE, 5G - and now laying the foundation for 6G - Qualcomm has consistently participated in the evolution of cellular technology. Our innovations span core aspects of wireless system design (e.g., waveforms, channel coding and MIMO) and extend to system architecture and new use cases like lower-complexity IoT, sidelink and even non-terrestrial networks (NTN), which leverage cellular building blocks to harmonize satellite and terrestrial communication. A major milestone in this journey came earlier this year with the decision on the 6G Study Item in 3GPP Release 20, marking the formal start of the 6G standardization process, even as 5G Advanced continues to evolve. Today, we're actively contributing to 6G development, focusing on key innovations and use cases like AI-native air interface and integrated sensing and communication (ISAC). Through these efforts, we are shaping the future of intelligent connectivity and redefining what's possible in cellular communications.
• Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi has evolved from basic wireless access to a critical enabler of high-performance local connectivity, for homes, enterprises and industrial environments. Each generation introduces new capabilities: MU-MIMO in Wi-Fi 5, uplink OFDMA in Wi-Fi 6 and Multi-Link Operation in Wi-Fi 7. Qualcomm has helped define these features to support faster, more reliable and lower-latency connections. As we look ahead to Wi-Fi 8, our focus is on ultra-reliable, deterministic performance and enhanced multi-link capabilities to support real-time applications like XR and industrial automation.
• Video compression: Video codecs are instrumental for delivering high-quality media across constrained networks and devices. Standards like HEVC (H.265) and VVC (H.266) have enabled efficient compression through innovations in frame compression and filtering. It's fair to say that video compression technology has played a pivotal role in enabling the current ecosystem of video consumption on smartphones. Our contributions have helped improve visual quality while reducing bandwidth and power consumption. Now, we're advancing next-generation codecs such as H.267 and exploring AI-assisted compression tools to support immersive media experiences, from live streaming to on-device generative content.
• Speech codecs: Speech standards ensure natural, intelligible voice communication across diverse environments, from mobile calls to satellite links. Technologies like voice-activity detection and bandwidth extension have transformed mobile voice quality. We have contributed to defining key codecs including QCELP, EVRC and EVS. The latest in this area is the Ultra-Low Bitrate Codec (aka ULBC) for AI-powered speech compression over challenging links such as satellite, bringing high-quality voice to a new array of use cases.
• Memory and storage: Memory and storage technologies like LPDDR and UFS are critical for delivering predictable performance in mobile and AI workloads. These standards govern bandwidth, latency and energy efficiency. We have contributed across multiple generations, helping define specifications that support high-speed imaging, on-device AI and real-time edge intelligence. Our current work in JEDEC focuses on next-gen LPDDR/UFS, memory pooling and disaggregated architectures, and automotive-grade reliability - enabling scalable, power-efficient architectures for future applications.

Shaping the future of wireless technology

We're committed to advancing the next era of wireless, AI and immersive technologies through foundational research and early contributions to global standards. Through active engagement with 3GPP and other key organizations, we're paving the way for 6G; a future where intelligence is built into the network and devices, sensing is seamlessly integrated, and terrestrial and non-terrestrial systems converge to unlock transformative new experiences.

Our focus is clear: to participate and lead in global standards, deliver innovations that scale and help ensure technology remains secure, efficient and accessible worldwide.

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