Qualcomm says its mid-range Snapdragon 600 and 700 series chipsets in 2020 will feature an integrated 5G modem, lowering the barrier for 5G adoption
Qualcomm is putting a 5G modem in Snapdragon 600 and 700 series chipsets. — What you need to know — Qualcomm plans to integrate …
Context & Ripple Effects
Qualcomm has been walking its modem roadmap down-market for over a year: the X24 LTE modem was built for integration into chips powering 2019 flagships, and in February it committed to shipping its first chipset with a integrated 5G modem in the first half of 2020. Today's move extends that plan from flagship silicon to the volume tiers — the Snapdragon 600 and 700 series that power most Android handsets sold.
The significance is adoption economics: with the modem on-die rather than as a separate chip, mid-range OEMs get 5G without the bill-of-materials and board-space penalty that kept early 5G phones expensive. The later Snapdragon 4s Gen 2, aimed at putting 5G under $100, shows where this trajectory lands.
First-order effects
- Mid-range handset makers using Snapdragon 600/700 silicon gain an integrated-5G option in 2020, letting them ship affordable 5G phones without adding a discrete modem.
Second-order effects
- Qualcomm's own premium-tier strategy shifts accordingly — the follow-on X60 modem at up to 7.5 Gbps and the Snapdragon 778G for premium midrange keep the flagship and upper-mid segments differentiated while integration commoditizes base 5G below them.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, 5G stops being a segment differentiator entirely: once even sub-$100 devices carry it via feature-limited chips like the 4s Gen 2, competition moves to efficiency, mmWave support, and AI compute rather than connectivity itself.
The trend: Mobile chipsets are absorbing the 5G modem tier by tier, turning cellular connectivity from a flagship selling point into table stakes across the entire smartphone price range.