Qualcomm has kicked off the new year by announcing the Snapdragon 480, its first 5G chipset designed for affordable handsets that fall somewhere in the $200 price range.
Lower-priced phones with 5G capability haven’t been all the rage yet in the U.S., but in other countries, like China and India, interest has been high, resulting in Qualcomm facing intense global competition in this area from companies like Taiwan’s MediaTek, which has catered well to those markets so far.
Not only will the 480 chipset ensure that Qualcomm can now go head-to-head with MediaTek when it comes to budget phones, but unlike its competition, Qualcomm’s latest chipset supports millimeter-wave (mmWave), in addition to sub-6 GHz 5G. MediaTek has yet to build a chipset with mmWave support.
