Neil Jablon, PhD
Neil is senior director, product management at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., in San Diego, within Qualcomm’s semiconductor division, where he is responsible for global partnerships that help Qualcomm rapidly grow its Internet of Things (IoT) chipset, software, and services businesses.
Neil and his team work closely with numerous business and technical leads, as well as Qualcomm’s internal units, joint ventures, and other partners in China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, the Americas, Europe, and other regions. From 2011-2018, Neil established, and then led product management for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon™ (mobile processor) third-party hardware component ecosystem (e.g., memories, cameras, displays, sensors, etc.). Neil’s (mostly China-based) team verified over a thousand third-party hardware components for inclusion in a preferred vendor list targeted to Android smartphone OEMs in China and other world regions. Neil also led Snapdragon™ product development platform product management and worked closely with the executive team to start up a third-party application software ecosystem.
Neil has held leadership roles in telecommunications with top global companies since 1986. He has a long track record of starting up and/or significantly growing areas of importance to product development. Neil is fluent in Chinese (Mandarin dialect), and since 2006 has concentrated on expanding Qualcomm’s business in China and elsewhere.
From 2010-2011, after first joining product management, Neil initiated and led the divisional foundation work in hardware component ecosystem strategy that suggested a new approach to building a hardware ecosystem (the basis for the aforementioned work). Previously at the same Qualcomm division, Neil led the sales forecast team, which every month forecasted the 12-month demand for over 600 million wireless semiconductor devices per year. Right after joining Qualcomm in 2006, he was the global financial modeling lead for the Qualcomm MediaFLO Technologies Division (“multichannel pay TV on a cellular handset”), completing 35 MediaFLO Service Operator business cases covering 17 countries within all major world regions.
Neil was executive consultant at IBM Global Services (Communications Sector), Beijing (2003-2006). He had telecom and airline business development roles across Greater China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, focusing on industry analysis, strategy, finance, and marketing, and delivering several large ($100+ mn) telecom strategic outsourcing proposals. Before that, he was director, regional strategy, Vodafone Group, Tokyo (2000-2002), delivering a new corporate and business strategy framework to the J-Phone Group (now Softbank Mobile). Neil was at AirTouch Communications, Walnut Creek, California (1994-2000), where he co-founded the Mobile Satellite Services Group (Globalstar Exclusive Service Provider), starting up five technical functional areas from scratch. Neil began his career at AT&T Bell Laboratories (1986-1994) as a product development researcher, and then systems engineer and project lead.
Neil received his PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University (thesis: smart antennas). He subsequently received his MBA in general management from the UCLA Anderson School. Neil was a Hertz Fellow and Tau Beta Pi Fellow at Stanford University (1981-1985), where he also studied Chinese. Later on, Neil studied Japanese, achieving intermediate-to-advanced proficiency. Neil is an IEEE Senior Member. His outside interests include China, Japan, economics, travel, and hot yoga. Neil is a Yoga Alliance-certified yoga instructor (RYT-200).