SAN FRANCISCO, April 10 (Xinhua) -- Qualcomm has maintained a great partnership with Chinese mobile manufacturers and other companies to support the booming Chinese gaming industry with more optimized game processors for Chinese game vendors, a senior executive of Qualcomm said Tuesday.
On the sidelines of the first Qualcomm AI Day held in downtown San Francisco earlier Tuesday, Keith Kressin, senior vice president of product management at Qualcomm, told Xinhua that the U.S. chipmaker is working with several Chinese big-name game vendors such as Tencent and Netease by providing powerful gaming processors for its Chinese consumers.
He said Qualcomm is even providing its Chinese partners with the company's latest gaming-centric Snapdragon 730G processor, which was just unveiled Tuesday at the Qualcomm AI Day. The chipset features lower WiFi latency to support efficient online gaming and provide smooth, fast gameplay.
"We have an awesome relationship with Tencent and Netease and other gaming platforms. So, we've optimized for our elite gaming and for the 730G, a number of games specific from China like the King of Honor, (and) we've done a great deal of optimization for the Snapdragon processor to get the best experience with physically-based rendering and true (high-definition) HD picture quality (for the game)," he said.
The King of Honor published by Tencent is a popular mobile game in China, which had accumulated more than 200 million registered players by 2017, with active daily users exceeding more than 80 million.
China is the world's largest gaming market, with sales reaching 214.44 billion yuan (about 32.01 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018, up 5.3 percent year on year, according to the China Game Publishers Association Publications Committee.
"We have a number of other optimization specific to Chinese games, and we have a team of engineers devoted to optimizing games for China," Kressin said.
He noted that the Qualcomm team is in China, working with the Chinese partners on a weekly basis.
"Gaming in China is a major focus and Qualcomm there acts as a supporter of OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and software partners," Kressin said.
As for 5G technology development, Kressin said Qualcomm is working with leading Chinese smartphone manufacturers such as Xiaomi and OPPO to "help them roll out handsets within China and to help them move outside of China into new markets."
"We have a great partnership with the Chinese OEMs and we look forward to working with them more over 5G," he said.
"The Chinese ecosystem is really vibrant when it comes to AI," he said, adding that some Chinese firms are engaged in AI application, such as SenseTime, a Chinese AI facial recognition startup and FacePlusPlus, another Chinese platform of AI cognitive services.
"We have a great relationship with the Chinese software vendors and plan to continue to do so," said Kressin.
"We have a great relationship with the three main telecom carriers in China, and Qualcomm has the solution today and is ready for the China networks," he said.
He noted that Qualcomm is positioned to support the Chinese telecom operators and China has rolled out ambitious 5G strategies, "not just for handsets, but for infrastructure, buildings, autos and smart cities."
"We are very impressed with the Chinese investment in 5G and we look forward to being the primary silicon provider," he said.
