Qualcomm is a name we’re very familiar with in the Android world – its products power the vast majority of our smartphones and tablets, and they’ve become the primary vendor of processors to power Wear OS devices as well.
Now the company is seeking to claim a similar stake of the smart speaker market with its QCS400-series processors.
This new range of processors is aimed at audio products – smart speakers, soundbars and receivers. It’ll let hardware manufacturers perform better voice detection with support for 4 microphone inputs; they’ll be able to use multiple hotwords to wake devices and it’ll scale up to high end audio applications with up to 32 channels of audio processing with support for Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, AptX and more, depending on the specific processor.
There’s 4 processors in the range, from QCS403 & QCS404 designed for basic smart speakers and voice assistants (no AI, Dolby etc) through QCS-405 for soundbars and home theatre applications (adds AI processing and Dolby), up to QCS-407 for AV receivers.
Like all the best launches, we’ve got a source table as well:
Qualcomm isn’t necessarily playing for consumers’ hearts and minds here – they want to supply the platform on which smart speakers and other tech is built. Nonetheless, you should probably expect to see the Qualcomm name out there more when you’re shopping for your next smart speaker or audio devices.
