By Kelly Hill
Qualcomm announced the appointment of Jim Cathey as the new chief commercial officer of Qualcomm Technologies.
Cathey takes the role effectively immediately, and will report directly to Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon.
Cathey has been with Qualcomm since 2006, most recently in the role of senior VP and president of global business for Qualcomm Technologies. He has held a number of leadership roles for the company in the Asia-Pacific region, serving as country manager in Taiwan, president of Qualcomm Technologies’ operations in Japan and then as president of the company’s operations in both Asia Pacific and India before moving into the role of president of global business.
As SVP and president of global business, Cathey had had responsibility for all of Qualcomm Technologies’ go-to-market activities, from sales and business development to carrier partnerships, distribution channels and assisting with in-country relationships, the company said.
Prior to his time at Qualcomm, Cathey was an executive at Micron Technology and MicroDisplay, and also served as head of investor relations for PixTech, which focuses on industrial vision systems.
Cathey is on the board of directors at CTIA and holds seventeen patents.
“Jim’s leadership has been integral to cultivating, strengthening, and expanding key partner’s relationships while augmenting our regional sales and customer support capabilities. His contribution to Qualcomm’s success over the years has been significant,” said Amon. “I’m pleased to have Jim join Qualcomm’s executive committee as Chief Commercial Officer as we continue to grow the business into new industries and execute on the largest opportunities in Qualcomm’s history.”
Cathey joins the company’s C-level executives as Qualcomm eyes diverse growth opportunities in mobile, computing, RF front end, automotive, artificial intelligence (AI) and IoT over the coming decade, foreseeing a US$700 billion total addressable market, compared to about $100 billion TAM today. Amon said at last fall’s investor day that Qualcomm “can no longer be defined by a single market and a single end customer” and that its technology roadmap around high-performance, low-power computing, on-device intelligence, wireless, AI, signal processing, camera, graphics, sensors, and more “will scale to support every single device at the edge.”
