Qualcomm’s new CEO Steve Mollenkopf wants to challenge the status quo and for the chipset vendor to realise new opportunities in emerging markets and M2M.

“You don’t ever want to get comfortable or you’ll have a lot of problems,” Mollenkopf said in an interview with Bloomberg. “The impatience with where things stand today and wanting to push it forward is very common in the company.”

Qualcomm faces the prospect of slowing revenue growth in future years, hence Mollenkopf’s interest in new prospects.

Identified as a “top priority” is China, where Qualcomm wants to get more licensing revenue as well as chipset sales from handset vendors who supply market leader China Mobile.

Alluring as it is, the Chinese market also carries risk, as the company has found as a  subject of an anti-trust investigation there (Mollenkopf declined to comment).

Mollenkopf was named CEO in December while predecessor Paul Jacobs takes on the role of executive chairman. Mollenkopf officially took over from Jacobs this week.

In addition to new geographic markets, there is also M2M where the new CEO identifies cars and healthcare as two areas of particular interest.

“The gap with what people want to do with the phone, or phone technology, and what we’re currently doing with it is pretty large,” he said. “Cellphone technology has barely made it into the car, it’s barely made it into health care, it’s barely made it into a lot of areas where it will go.”