On June 30, Cristiano Amon will become Qualcomm’s fourth CEO, succeeding Steve Mollenkopf. Amon, who currently is president of the wireless technology giant, first joined Qualcomm in 1995 as an engineer. After stints at Vésper, a mobile carrier in Brazil; Ericsson; and Velocom, Amon returned in 2004 to run the San Diego-based company’s semiconductor business. He spoke with Fast Company editor in chief Stephanie Mehta about the future of wireless and the next problems his technologists will tackle. Edited excerpts follow. Fast Company: What do you see as the biggest differences between the Qualcomm you joined in 1995 and the company today? Cristiano Amon: When I started there were about 3,000 employees, and we didn’t even have half a billion in revenue, but we had this incredible CDMA (code-division multiple access) technology. I was fortunate enough to join before it was ever launched. It was very disruptive for digital communications. It was such an incredible company. I fell in love with it. Fast forward to where we were now. Qualcomm has been defining innovation in the world of communication, from 3G to 4G to 5G. We’re now we’re in an incredible position that there’s demand for technology, and we can make a difference in every single industry. It’s an incredible journey, and while we are now a very large company, we haven’t lost that entrepreneurial spirit. I think of founding CEO Irwin Jacobs as the builder, and his successor, Paul Jacobs, as presiding over the massive explosion of smartphones
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Qualcomm’s next CEO has seen the future of wireless, and (shocker) it’s called 6G