PM Modi meets Qualcomm CEO Cristiano R Amon in US, meeting to give fillip to India's 5G dream

Washington, Sep 23: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on a three-day tour to the US, met with Cristiano R Amon, President and Chief executive officer (CEO) of Qualcomm, in Washington DC. It is considered as an important meeting as it gives a fillip to India's 5G dream.

Qualcomm, a US multinational corporation, creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless technology and owns patents critical to the 5G,[4] 4G,[4] CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA and WCDMA mobile communications standards.

Sources say that the PM had a good meeting with the CEO of Qualcomm, which has a huge presence in India, including R&D. Amon expressed his enthusiasm to work with India on ambitious digital transformation programmes including in 5G, PM WANI & others.

"He spoke about the incredible opportunities in India as it is a big market and sees the country as a big export market. It's the right time for India to not only manufacture for the Indian market but also plan to serve the need of other countries," sources added.

Amon also expressed his interest in partnering with India to work in the field of semiconductors and the PM assured Qualcomm that India will proactively work on the proposals made by them.

PM stressed that India has the scale for ambitious projects and said that the country has prepared 5G standards and urged Qualcomm to actively participate as they did in the case of NAVIK.

"PM also said that since Qualcomm has trusted Indian talent already, it can now trust Indian talent and start manufacturing with the advantage the PLI scheme offers," the sources claim.

During the meeting, Modi also spoke about the new liberalised drone policy and said that Qualcomm could take part in new opportunities in the new emerging market.

Following the meeting, the PMO tweeted, "President and CEO of Qualcomm, Cristiano R Amon, and PM Narendra Modi had a productive interaction. PM Modi highlighted the vast opportunities India offers. Mr. Amon expressed keenness to work with India in areas such as 5G and other Digital India efforts."

"We spoke on semiconductors which is an important topic of conversation. We spoke on the opportunity to continue to build an incredible mobile ecosystem developing in India. We're happy with everything we're doing together with India," the CEO of Qualcomm said after the meeting. He added, "I think the approach to driving economic growth in making India a destination for investment has been very successful and we welcome that."

Stating that the company is proud to partner with India, Amon said that the discussion was about 5G and its acceleration. "We talked about an incredible opportunity to advance the industry not only domestically in India but India as export of technology," he stated