Jon Rubinstein Joins Board of Qualcomm, as Mobile Chipmaker Ups Its Silicon Valley Cred
According to sources close to the situation, well-known tech exec Jon Rubinstein will be joining the board of Qualcomm, the San Diego-based chipmaker that has gotten a big boost of late for its role in the explosion of mobile devices.
Context & Ripple Effects
Qualcomm enters mid-2013 riding the smartphone buildout but carrying open strategic questions: it warned in April 2012 that third-party foundries couldn't keep up with Snapdragon demand, and its March 2012 bet on ultrathin quad-core ARM laptops around Windows 8 follows a first attempt — the 2009 'Smartbook' — that failed to change the industry as claimed. It has also been buying influence rather than only chips, taking a minority stake in Sharp via a $120 million investment in December 2012.
Adding Jon Rubinstein to the board — still reported via sources close to the situation, not yet confirmed by the company — is a governance-level answer to those questions: a consumer-device veteran inside a San Diego chipmaker whose customers increasingly compete with it at the product layer. The story traveled fast, with Bloomberg, CNET, Engadget and The Verge all picking it up the same day.
First-order effects
- Qualcomm's board gains direct consumer-hardware experience at the moment its Snapdragon strategy extends beyond phones into tablets and the Windows 8 laptop bet, where its earlier Smartbook effort fell short.
Second-order effects
- Device partners reading the appointment get a signal that Qualcomm intends to stay engaged in end-product strategy — sharpening the tension with customers like Samsung, with whom it already co-chairs a wireless charging standards group formed at CTIA in 2012.
Third-order effects
- If mobile silicon keeps moving into computing categories owned by PC-era incumbents, expect more chipmakers to recruit consumer-device leadership into senior roles — board seats today, operating roles as the boundary between chip supplier and device strategist keeps eroding.
The trend: Mobile chipmakers are absorbing consumer-device talent at the top as their silicon pushes out of phones and into the computing hardware business.