QUALCOMM Incorporated (Qualcomm) is a global technology leader, helping to bring intelligent computing everywhere through the development and commercialization of foundational technologies, including 3G (third generation), 4G (fourth generation) and 5G (fifth generation) wireless connectivity, high-performance and low-power computing and on-device artificial intelligence (AI). The company’s technologies and products have helped power the growth in smartphones and other connected devices.
The co...
QUALCOMM Incorporated (Qualcomm) is a global technology leader, helping to bring intelligent computing everywhere through the development and commercialization of foundational technologies, including 3G (third generation), 4G (fourth generation) and 5G (fifth generation) wireless connectivity, high-performance and low-power computing and on-device artificial intelligence (AI). The company’s technologies and products have helped power the growth in smartphones and other connected devices.
The company is scaling its innovations across industries and applications beyond mobile handsets, driving digital transformation with the company’s ecosystem partners in areas, including automotive and the internet of things (IoT). In automotive, the company’s Snapdragon Digital Chassis platforms, including connectivity, digital cockpit and advanced driver assistance and automated driving (ADAS/AD), are helping to connect the car to its environment and the cloud, creating unique in-cabin experiences and enabling a comprehensive assisted and automated driving solution. In IoT, the company’s inventions have helped power growth in industries and applications such as consumer (including personal computers (PCs), tablets, voice and music and extended reality (XR)), edge networking (including mobile broadband and wireless access points) and industrial (including handhelds, retail, tracking and logistics and utilities). The company derives revenues principally from sales of integrated circuit products, including the company’s Snapdragon family of highly-integrated, system-based solutions, and licensing of the company’s intellectual property, including patents and other rights.
The foundational technologies the company invents help power modern digital experiences. The company shares these inventions broadly through the company’s licensing programs enabling wide ecosystem access to technologies at the core of mobile innovation, and through the sale of the company’s integrated circuit platforms (also known as integrated circuit products, chips, chipsets or modules) and other products. The company innovates and collaborates across many ecosystems, including with manufacturers, operators, developers, system integrators, cloud providers, test tool vendors, service providers, governments and industry standards organizations, to enable next-generation digital transformation. The company continues to play a leading role in developing system-level inventions that serve as the foundation for multiple generations of advanced wireless technologies. This includes technologies such as CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) families of technologies, with the latter encompassing LTE (Long-Term Evolution) and 5G NR (New Radio), which are the primary digital technologies used to transmit voice or data over radio waves using a public or private cellular wireless network.
The company owns significant intellectual property, including patents, patent applications and trade secrets, applicable to products that implement any version of CDMA and/or OFDMA technologies. The company also develops and commercializes numerous other key technologies used in mobile and other devices and services, and the company owns substantial intellectual property related to these technologies. Some of these inventions are contributed to and commercialized as industry standards, such as for certain video and audio codecs, Wi-Fi, position location, UWB (ultra-wideband), Bluetooth, memory and component interconnect. The company has also developed other technologies that are used by wireless and other devices that are not related to industry standards, such as operating systems, user interfaces, graphics and camera processing functionality, RF (radio frequency), RFFE (radio frequency front-end) and antenna designs, AI and machine learning techniques and application processor architectures, among other technologies.
The company is organized on the basis of products and services and has three reportable segments. The company conducts business primarily through the company’s QCT (Qualcomm CDMA Technologies) semiconductor business and the company’s QTL (Qualcomm Technology Licensing) licensing business. QCT develops and supplies integrated circuit platforms and system software with advanced connectivity and high-performance, low-power computing technologies for use in mobile devices; automotive systems for connectivity, digital cockpit and ADAS/AD; and IoT including consumer electronic devices, industrial devices and edge networking products. QTL grants licenses or otherwise provides rights to use portions of the company’s intellectual property portfolio, which includes certain patent rights essential to and/or useful in the manufacture and sale of certain wireless products. The company’s QSI (Qualcomm Strategic Initiatives) reportable segment makes strategic investments. The company also have nonreportable segments, including QGOV (Qualcomm Government Technologies) and the company’s cloud computing processing initiative.
Substantially all of the company’s products and services businesses, including QCT, and substantially all of the company’s engineering and research and development functions, are operated by Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (QTI), a subsidiary of the company, and QTI’s subsidiaries. QTL is operated by the company, which owns the vast majority of the company’s patent portfolio. Snapdragon and Qualcomm branded products are products of QTI and/or its subsidiaries. Qualcomm patents are licensed by the company.
The company’s processors are purpose-built to power mobile experiences, automobiles and the IoT. The company has developed System-on-Chip (SoC) architecture with heterogeneous computing features, which uses its central processing unit (CPU) and different types of specialized engines (graphics processing unit (GPU) and neural processing unit (NPU)) to enable high-performance and low-power computing and other optimization techniques. The company’s Qualcomm Oryon and Qualcomm Kryo CPU processors deliver enhanced security, AI and connectivity solutions, all designed to enable the next generation of high-tech devices and apps. Qualcomm Oryon CPU core technology is custom-designed to deliver a new level of performance and efficiency and developed to be integrated across a wide portfolio of Snapdragon powered products starting with certain PC and smartphone products and expanding to certain automotive and IoT products. The company’s Qualcomm Adreno GPUs are designed to deliver high quality graphics performance for visually rich 3D gaming and user interfaces.
Operating Segments
The company has three reportable segments. The company conducts business primarily through QCT and QTL, while QSI makes strategic investments.
QCT Segment
QCT is a leading developer and supplier of integrated circuits products and system software with advanced connectivity and high-performance, low-power computing technologies, for use in mobile devices; automotive systems for connectivity, digital cockpit and ADAS/AD; and IoT including consumer electronic devices, industrial devices and edge networking products. QCT’s integrated circuit products are sold and its system software is licensed to manufacturers that use the company’s products in a broad range of devices, from low-tier, entry-level devices primarily for emerging regions to premium-tier devices, including but not limited to mobile devices, wireless networks, devices used in IoT, broadband gateway equipment, consumer electronic devices and automotive systems. The company’s technology roadmap delivers the latest network technologies across multiple product tiers, devices and industries. This roadmap is the result of extensive collaboration with manufacturers, operators, developers, systems integrators, cloud providers, tool vendors, service providers, governments and industry standards organizations, as well as the company’s years of research into emerging network standards and the development of integrated circuits. The company’s roadmap takes advantage of new standards, while maintaining backward compatibility with existing standards. The company has leveraged and expects to continue to leverage the foundational technologies initially developed and commercialized for use in mobile handset devices, such as the company’s core baseband modem and processor technologies and the company’s other wireless connectivity products including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and precise positioning technologies, to extend into product categories, industries and applications beyond mobile handsets, such as automotive and IoT (which includes the industries and applications of consumer, industrial and edge networking).
The Snapdragon family of highly integrated, system-based solutions include the Snapdragon mobile, compute, sound and automotive platforms. Each platform consists of application processors and wireless connectivity capabilities, including the company’s cellular modem that provides core baseband modem functionality for voice and data communications, non-cellular wireless connectivity (such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth) and global positioning functions. The company’s Snapdragon application processor functions include AI, security, graphics, display, audio, video, camera and other compute processing. The company’s Qualcomm Oryon and Kryo CPUs are designed to deliver high levels of compute performance with optimized power consumption. The company’s Hexagon NPUs are designed to support a variety of AI processing tasks for superior performance-per-watt, thermal efficiency and battery life. The company’s Qualcomm Adreno GPUs are designed to deliver high quality graphics performance for visually rich 3D gaming and user interfaces. In addition to the highly integrated core SoC, the company also designs and supplies supporting components, including the RF transceiver, PM (power management), audio, codecs, speaker amps and additional wireless connectivity integrated circuits. These supporting components, in addition to the company’s cellular modems and application processors comprising the company’s core SoC, are also sold as individual components. The combination of the Snapdragon SoC, system software and supporting components provides an overall platform with optimized performance and efficiency, enabling manufacturers to design and deliver powerful, slim and power-efficient devices ready for integration with complex cellular networks worldwide.
The company’s portfolio of RF products includes Qualcomm RFFE components that are designed to simplify the RF front-end design for 5G, including sub-6 GHz and mmWave, as well as, for 4G LTE multimode devices, to reduce power consumption and to improve radio performance. The company provides comprehensive RFFE product offerings with system level performance from the modem and transceiver to the antenna that include complex 4G/5G transmit and receive modules, power tracking, tuning systems, multimode-multiband power amplification, low noise amplifiers and mmWave antenna solutions, in addition to discrete filtering products, for devices and applications across the mobile handsets, automotive and IoT industries. The company has also integrated its Snapdragon platform with the company’s RFFE components to create the company’s Snapdragon 5G modem-RF products, a modem-to-antenna platform integrating AI to maximize data speeds and performance, support superior call connectivity and coverage and extend battery life.
The company’s wireless connectivity products also consist of integrated circuits and system software for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and frequency modulation, as well as technologies that support location data and services. The company’s wireless connectivity products provide additional connectivity for mobile devices, tablets, PCs, XR headsets, voice and music devices, wearable devices, along with other IoT devices and applications, automotive connectivity, digital cockpit and ADAS/AD, utility meters and logistic trackers and industrial sensors. QCT also offers standalone Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, applications processor and Ethernet products utilized within these devices and systems. The company’s networking products include Wi-Fi, Ethernet and passive optical network (PON) chips, network processors, wireless access points and routers, broadband gateway equipment and software. These products help enable home and business networks to support the growing number of connected devices, digital media and data services.
Other than for certain of the company’s RFFE modules and RF filter products, QCT utilizes a fabless production model, which means that the company do not own or operate foundries for the production of silicon wafers from which the company’s integrated circuits are made. Therefore, the company primarily relies on third parties to perform the manufacturing and assembly, and most of the testing, of the company’s integrated circuits based primarily on the company’s proprietary designs and test programs. The company’s suppliers also are responsible for the procurement of most of the raw materials used in the production of the company’s integrated circuits. Integrated circuits are die cut from silicon wafers that have completed the package assembly and test manufacturing processes. The semiconductor package supports the electrical contacts that connect the integrated circuit to a circuit board. Die cut from silicon wafers are the essential components of all the company’s integrated circuits and a significant portion of the total integrated circuit cost.
The company employs both turnkey and two-stage manufacturing models to purchase the company’s integrated circuits. Under the turnkey model, the company’s foundry suppliers are responsible for delivering fully assembled and tested integrated circuits. Under the two-stage manufacturing model, the company purchases die in singular or wafer form from semiconductor manufacturing foundries and contract with separate third parties for manufacturing services, such as wafer bump, probe, assembly and the majority of the company’s final test requirements. The primary foundry suppliers for the company’s various digital, analog/mixed-signal, RF and PM integrated circuits include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Global Foundries, Samsung Electronics and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). The company’s primary semiconductor assembly and test suppliers are Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Amkor Technology, Siliconware Precision Industries and STATSChipPAC. The majority of the company’s foundry and semiconductor assembly and test suppliers are located in the Asia-Pacific region.
QCT primarily uses internal fabrication facilities to manufacture certain RFFE modules and RF filter products, and the company’s manufacturing operations consist of front-end and back-end processes. The front-end processes primarily take place at manufacturing facilities located in Germany and Singapore and involve the imprinting of substrate wafers with the structure and circuitry required for the products to function (also known as wafer fabrication). The back-end processes include the assembly, packaging and test of RFFE modules and RF filter products and their preparation for distribution. The company’s back-end manufacturing facilities are located in China and Singapore.
QCT's marketing strategy aims to promote Qualcomm as the leader of enabling intelligent computing everywhere, and Snapdragon as the preferred platform brand powering premium experiences across handsets, automotive and IoT. Through direct marketing efforts, partnerships and collaborations (including marketing programs with customers), products powered by Snapdragon and Qualcomm technologies are marketed to expand the reach of both brands to drive awareness and preference.
QCT’s sales are primarily made through supply terms which implement a purchase order and order confirmation process for delivery of products. QCT generally allows customers to reschedule delivery dates within a defined time frame and to cancel orders prior to shipment with or without payment of a cancellation fee, depending on when the order is canceled.
QCT’s competitors include, but are not limited to, companies such as Broadcom, HiSilicon, MediaTek, Mobileye, Nvidia, NXP Semiconductors, Qorvo, Samsung, Skyworks, Texas Instruments and UNISOC. QCT also faces competition, which may intensify in the future, from products internally developed by the company’s customers, including some of the company’s largest customers, such as Apple and Samsung, to early-stage companies.
QTL Segment
QTL grants licenses or otherwise provides rights to use portions of the company’s intellectual property portfolio, which, among other rights, includes certain patent rights essential to and/or useful in the manufacture, sale and/or use of certain wireless products, including without limitation, products implementing WCDMA (Wideband CDMA), LTE and/or OFDMA-based 5G standards and their derivatives. The company grants licenses or otherwise provide rights to use the company’s cellular standard-essential patents (including 3G, 4G and 5G) for both single-mode and multimode devices on a worldwide basis. The company also offers licenses to its cellular standard-essential patents together with other Qualcomm patents that may be useful to such licensed products for licensees that desire to obtain the commercial benefits of receiving such broad patent rights from the company. While the company offers license rights to patents that the company does not have a duty or obligation to grant, those rights may be negotiated at the company’s discretion. A significant portion of QTL’s licensing revenues is derived from licensees that have entered into license agreements that grant licenses under Qualcomm’s cellular standard-essential patents. The company’s licensees manufacture wireless cellular products, such as mobile devices (including handsets), other consumer devices (e.g., tablets and PCs), plug-in end user data modem cards and embedded modules for incorporation into machine-to-machine devices and certain other devices, connected vehicle units and connected vehicle modules used in automobiles, wireless access points and small cell wireless products.
The company has an extensive portfolio of the United States and foreign patents. The company continues to pursue patent applications around the world. The company’s patents have broad coverage in many countries, including Brazil, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and countries in Europe (including European patents with unitary effect). A substantial portion of the company’s patents and patent applications relate to digital wireless communications technologies, including patents that are essential or may be important to the commercial implementation of CDMA2000, WCDMA (UMTS), LTE and/or OFDMA-based 5G products. The company’s patent portfolio was the most widely and extensively licensed in the industry, including more than 200 5G license agreements as of September 30, 2024. Additionally, the company has a substantial patent portfolio related to key technologies used in communications and other devices and/or related services, some of which are covered by industry standards. These include certain video codecs, audio codecs, Wi-Fi, memory interfaces, wireline interfaces, wireless power, position location, broadcast and streaming protocols, and short-range communication functionalities, including Bluetooth. The company’s patents cover a wide range of technologies across connectivity (including wireless devices and network infrastructure equipment), computing and AI applications in diverse end-markets, not just the portion of such patented technologies incorporated into chipsets. Over the years, a number of companies have challenged the company’s patent position, but the mobile communications industry generally recognizes that any company seeking to develop, manufacture and/or sell certain wireless products that use 3G, 4G and/or 5G technologies requires a license or other rights to use the company’s patents.
The company has licensed or otherwise provided rights to use its patents to hundreds of companies on industry-accepted terms. The company’s strategy to make its patented technologies broadly available has been a catalyst for industry growth, helping to enable a wide range of companies offering a broad array of wireless products and features while increasing the capabilities of and/or driving down average and low-end selling prices for handsets and other wireless devices. By licensing or otherwise providing rights to use the company’s patents to a wide range of equipment manufacturers, encouraging innovative applications, supporting equipment manufacturers with integrated chipset and software products and focusing on improving the efficiency of the airlink for wireless operators, the company has helped multimode device capabilities evolve, grow demand and reduce device pricing. 5G network deployments and commercial 3G/4G/5G multimode device sales began in 2019 and have continued. By licensing or otherwise providing rights to use the company’s patents to a wide range of equipment manufacturers, the company is supporting the global rollout and availability of 5G technology. 5G will continue to encourage innovative applications through enhanced mobile broadband services with lower latency and multi-gigabit user data speeds and bring more capacity and efficiency to wireless networks.
Upon the initial deployment of OFDMA-based networks, the products implementing such technologies generally have been multimode and implement OFDMA-based and CDMA-based technologies. The licenses granted under the company’s existing license agreements generally cover multimode CDMA/OFDMA (3G/4G/5G) devices, and the company’s licensees are obligated to pay royalties under their license agreements for their sales of such devices.
Standards bodies have been informed that the company holds patents that might be essential for all 3G standards that are based on CDMA, patents that are potentially essential for 4G technologies and patents and pending patent applications that are potentially essential for 5G technologies. The company has committed to such standards bodies that the company will offer to license its essential patents for these standards consistent with the company’s commitments to those bodies. The company has made similar commitments with respect to certain other technologies implemented in industry standards.
The vast majority of QTL revenues have been generated through the company’s licensees’ sales of OFDMA-based products (including 3G/4G and 3G/4G/5G multimode devices), such as smartphones and other devices. The company has invested in both the acquisition and development of, and continue to invest in the development of, OFDMA technology and intellectual property and have generated the industry leading patent portfolio applicable to LTE, LTE Advanced, LTE Advanced Pro and 5G NR. Some of the company’s inventions that serve as foundational technologies for 3G and 4G also serve as foundational technologies for 5G. The company has invested and continues to invest in the development of 5G and continue to play a significant role in driving advancements of 5G.
The company’s license agreements also may provide the company with rights to use certain of its licensees’ technology and intellectual property to manufacture, sell and/or use certain components (e.g., application-specific integrated circuits) and related software, cellular devices and/or infrastructure equipment.
QSI Segment
QSI makes strategic investments primarily through the company’s Qualcomm Ventures arm that are focused on expanding or opening new opportunities for the company’s technologies, as well as supporting the design and introduction of new products and services (or enhancing existing products or services). Many of these strategic investments are in early-stage companies in a variety of industries and applications, including but not limited to 5G, AI, automotive, consumer, enterprise, cloud, IoT and XR. Investments primarily include non-marketable equity securities, and to a lesser extent, marketable equity securities and convertible debt instruments. In addition, QSI segment results include revenues and related costs associated with certain development contracts with one of the company’s investees. As part of the company’s strategic investment activities, the company generally intends to pursue various exit strategies for each of the company’s QSI investments in the foreseeable future.
Other Businesses
Nonreportable segments include the company’s QGOV business and the company’s cloud computing processing initiative. QGOV provides development and other services and sells related products to the U.S. government agencies and their contractors.
Seasonality
Many of the company’s products and much of the company’s intellectual property are incorporated into consumer wireless devices, which are subject to seasonality and other fluctuations in demand. The company’s revenues have historically fluctuated based on consumer demand for devices, as well as on the timing of customer/licensee device launches and/or innovation cycles (such as the transition to the next generation of wireless technologies). This has resulted in fluctuations in QCT revenues in advance of and during device launches incorporating the company’s products and in QTL revenues when licensees’ sales occur.
Customers
In fiscal 2024, revenues from Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi each comprised 10% or more of the company’s consolidated revenues.
Research and Development
The company's research and development expenditures were $8.9 billion in the year ended September 29, 2024 (fiscal 2024).
History
QUALCOMM Incorporated was founded in 1985. The company was incorporated in California in 1985 and reincorporated in Delaware in 1991.
