Qualcomm Q3 2025 Earnings Report

Qualcomm EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $2.77
• Consensus EPS: $2.71
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.06
• One Year Ago EPS: $2.33

Qualcomm Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $10.37 billion
• Expected Revenue: $10.33 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$30.65 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +10.40%

Qualcomm Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q3 2025
• Date: 7/30/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, July 30, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 4:45PM ET

Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) is a global semiconductor and telecommunications equipment company headquartered in San Diego, California. Founded in 1985, the company is known for its development of wireless technologies and for playing a central role in the evolution of digital cellular standards, including CDMA and subsequent generations of mobile standards. Qualcomm’s business combines the design and sale of semiconductor products with a patent licensing program for wireless technologies and related intellectual property.

The company’s product portfolio includes system-on-chip (SoC) platforms marketed under the Snapdragon brand, cellular modem and RF front-end components, connectivity solutions for Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth, and processors and platforms aimed at automotive, IoT, networking and edge-computing applications. Qualcomm also provides software, reference designs and development tools that support device manufacturers and ecosystem partners in bringing wireless and connected products to market.

Qualcomm serves a global customer base that includes smartphone and device OEMs, network operators, automotive manufacturers, industrial and IoT equipment makers, and cloud and infrastructure providers. Its technologies are incorporated into consumer electronics, mobile devices, vehicles, and a range of connected devices and systems around the world, reflecting a broad geographic reach across North America, Asia, Europe and other markets.

Corporate leadership has emphasized advancing 5G, on-device AI, automotive connectivity, and the expansion of computing at the edge. Cristiano Amon serves as Chief Executive Officer, with Steve Mollenkopf in an executive chairman role. Qualcomm’s combination of chip design, software platforms and a long-established patent portfolio underpins its position as a foundational supplier to the global wireless and connected-device industries.

Qualcomm Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Qualcomm reported $10.4 billion in Q3 revenue and $2.77 non-GAAP EPS, both near the high end of guidance, and reaffirmed Q4 revenue guidance of $10.3 billion–$11.1 billion with EPS of $2.75–$2.95.
• Positive Sentiment: Automotive and IoT revenues rose 21% and 24% year-over-year, respectively, with 12 new Snapdragon digital chassis designs and a collaboration on BMW’s Neuya Class vehicles as Qualcomm pursues a $22 billion combined target by FY 2029.
• Positive Sentiment: Qualcomm is diversifying beyond handsets with Snapdragon eight Elite powering 124 AI-smartphone designs, >100 Snapdragon X series AI PCs on track by 2026, and 19 XR device designs including Meta and Xiaomi AI glasses.
• Positive Sentiment: The company is entering the data center market with Orion CPUs and NPU accelerator cards, plans to close the AlphaWave IP acquisition to boost high-speed connectivity IP, and is in advanced talks with a leading hyperscaler for FY 2028 revenue contribution.
• Neutral Sentiment: Qualcomm expects Samsung share to normalize at a 75% baseline for Galaxy S devices, while its new multi-year agreement with Xiaomi strengthens handset partnerships amid a decline in Apple volume.

Presentation

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Qualcomm Third Quarter Fiscal 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. Later, we'll conduct a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star, then the number two. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the numbers. Please submit your questions to one question and one follow-up. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded July 30, 2025. The playback number for today's call is 877-660-6853. International callers, please dial 201-612-7415. Playback reservation number is 13754. I would now like to turn the call over to Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan. Please go ahead.

[Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan, Head of Investor Relations at Qualcomm]

Thank you and good afternoon everyone. Today's call will include prepared remarks by Cristiano Amon and Akash Palkhiwala. In addition, Alex Rogers will join the question and answer session. You can access our earnings release and a slide presentation that accompany this call on our investor relations website. In addition, this call has been webcast on qualcomm.com and a replay will be available on our website later today. During the call today, we will use non-GAAP financial measures as defined in Regulation G and you can find the related reconciliations to GAAP on our website. We will also make forward-looking statements including projections and estimates of future events, business or industry trends or business or financial results. Actual events or results could differ materially from those projected in our forward-looking statements.

[Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan, Head of Investor Relations at Qualcomm]

Please refer to our SEC filings, including our most recent 10-K, which contain important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Now to comments from Qualcomm's President and Chief Executive Officer, Cristiano Amon.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Thank you, Mauricio, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. In fiscal Q3, we delivered revenues of $10.4 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $2.77, which was near the high end of our guidance range. Our chipset business delivered revenues of $9 billion, reflecting strength in automotive and IoT and ongoing growth in handsets. Automotive and IoT revenues increased 21% and 24%, respectively. Our licensing business revenues were $1.3 billion. Our momentum in automotive and IoT is the result of strong execution of our growth and diversification strategy. We remain on track to meet our fiscal 2029 target for combined automotive and IoT revenues of $22 billion. We're forecasting fiscal 2025 to be the second consecutive year of greater than 15% year-over-year growth in total QCT non-Apple revenues. I will now share some key highlights from the business.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

In handsets, we extended our Xiaomi collaboration with a multi-year agreement. Snapdragon 8 series platforms will power multiple generations of Xiaomi's flagship devices for China and global markets. With volume increasing each year of the agreement, the Snapdragon 8 Elite continues to set the pace of innovation in mobile processors and is leading the transition to AI smartphones. With 124 designs shipped or announced today, AI usage in smartphones is increasing. For example, Samsung noted that 70% of Galaxy S25 users are utilizing Galaxy AI, and usage of Google Gemini AI has nearly tripled among S25 users compared to the S24. Looking ahead, we expect the range of on-device and agentic AI use cases will continue to expand and reshape the mobile industry. We're optimistic about the Android ecosystem's leadership in AI.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

As we reach the one-year mark of our entry into AI PCs, we are encouraged by the steady progress we're seeing with our Snapdragon X series platforms. Multiple new devices launched during the quarter from leading OEMs such as Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Samsung, and we remain on track for more than 100 designs to be commercialized through 2026. Snapdragon is transforming personal computing experiences, and the design traction we're seeing from major customers reflects confidence in our technology roadmap, product portfolio, and long-term commitment to PCs in the second calendar quarter of 2025. According to third party sources, Snapdragon-based PCs continue to make up approximately 9% of Windows laptops sold above the $600 price tier in retail, U.S. and the top five European countries.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

While we are at the beginning of our journey into PCs, we remain excited about the long term opportunity and continue to work toward achieving $4 billion in revenue by fiscal 2029. In XR, Snapdragon continues to be the platform of choice for smart glasses and mixed reality devices. We now have 19 designs from our global partners. Demand for Meta's AI smart glasses continues to exceed expectations and they recently expanded their portfolio with the launch of the new Meta Oakley smart glasses and introduction of new Ray-Ban styles. Xiaomi's new AI glasses launched in the quarter were also well received. All three are powered by the Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 platform. At the Augmented World Expo USA, we conducted the world's first demonstration of a 1 billion parameter model running locally on smart glasses powered by our next generation Snapdragon AI platform.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

We also introduced a smart ring controller reference design as a new input device for discrete and intuitive interactions. Our Snapdragon Digital Chassis solutions continue to see strong traction across the automotive ecosystem with 12 new designs during the quarter and a total of 50 vehicle launches this fiscal year. We're incredibly excited about BMW's upcoming Neue Klasse vehicles which will launch globally with our new ISO Safety Certified ADAS stack later this year. This will include our Snapdragon Ride platforms and our jointly developed Driving Stack which meets safety standards in the US and Europe. More details about the deployment, certifications and capabilities will be shared at the IAA MOBILITY show in September. Our Snapdragon Ride platforms and Driving Stack are also gaining momentum more broadly with 20 OEM programs for various highway and urban navigate on autopilot solutions.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

The majority of these programs will launch in the next 18 months across all global regions. In industrial IoT, we continue to expand our ecosystem of partners and we're pleased with the traction of our Dragon Wing platforms. At COMPUTEX, we announced new collaborations with Digiwin and Aetina to utilize our AI on-prem appliance solution and AI inference suite for enterprise automation. We also expanded our work with IBM on their Maximo AI assistant powered by Watsonx AI. Our broad range of OEMs and partners now includes companies such as Asus IoT, Dell, Everfocus, iBase, Lenovo, Deloitte, e&, HUMAIN, Palantir, and many others.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

We're also gaining traction with our industrial grade Dragon Wing IQ Series with up to 100 TOPS of AI inference performance as well as the Dragonwing Intelligent Video Suite, a platform designed to extract intelligence from any video frame and create intelligent reasoning workflows for enterprises across many verticals. We've also seen continued strength in edge networking driven by strong demand for Wi-Fi 7 gateway platforms across retail and carrier customers and for 5G enabled fixed wireless access platforms for our carrier customers. Now I would like to provide an update on our expansion into the data center. This represents a new growth opportunity for Qualcomm and is a logical extension of our diversification strategy as we continue to demonstrate leadership in CPU performance and NPU efficiency as inference gains scale.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Cloud service providers are building dedicated inferencing clusters focused not only on performance but also efficiency, specifically tokens per dollar and tokens per watt. These factors combined with the shift from merchant x86 CPUs to custom ARM-compatible CPUs for both cloud computing and AI Head Node create an entry point for Qualcomm. We're currently building NPU-based AI inference accelerator cards as well as custom SoCs for general purpose and AI Head Node compute solutions utilizing our Oryon CPU. We also reached an agreement to acquire Alphawave IP Group, a global leader in high speed wire connectivity and compute technologies for data centers, AI data networking, and data storage. The acquisition is expected to close during the first calendar quarter of 2026.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Subject to customary closing conditions, Alphawave's leading IP and data center design capabilities are key assets that will complement our Oryon CPU and Hexagon NPU processors and help accelerate our roadmap. While we are in the early stages of this expansion, we are engaged with multiple potential customers and are currently in advanced discussions with a leading hyperscaler. If successful, we expect revenues to begin in the fiscal '28 time frame. Additionally, we signed an MOU with HUMAIN to develop AI data centers in Saudi Arabia and deliver highly efficient and scalable cloud to edge hybrid AI inferencing solutions for local and international customers. We also announced that our Orion CPUs can be integrated with NVDIA GPUs for high performance NVIDIA AI factories using the NVDIA NVLink Fusion architecture. We will provide further updates as we make progress.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Over the past 12 months, we have continued to see AI and generative AI advance at an accelerated rate and we're both excited and confident in the opportunities this is creating for Qualcomm across all our businesses. As Gen AI changes the human computer interface and agentic AI experiences continue to evolve, the mobile industry is being redefined and a new generation of personal AI devices are emerging. Smart glasses and wearables such as smartwatches, earbuds, and other form factors are being transformed into personal AI devices and as they connect the user directly to the AI agent and model, these devices are quickly transitioning from simply extending smartphone experiences to now providing new and unique personalized AI in agentic use cases. These devices will evolve independently of the smartphone ecosystem and become a significant opportunity.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Given our technology leadership in mobile XR and wearables and the breadth of our product portfolio, we expect to be the industry preferred solution provider in this new category. Specifically, personal AI devices will require Snapdragon's always on cloud connectivity, 5G, and micro-power Wi-Fi, power efficient processing, on-device AI, best in class imaging, audio, video sensors, and context capabilities. Meta AI Smart glasses are currently the best example of personal AI. We're very optimistic about the trends we see in this area with major AI players, application developers, and device makers investing in this space. Physical AI is another technology that is reshaping industries and creating new opportunities, particularly in robotics.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Robotics require high-performance computing including powerful on device AI, extended battery life, reliable connectivity, a higher level of silicon integration, and advanced computer vision and sensor fusion to interpret and understand real world information in real time and make decisions locally. These requirements are perfectly aligned with our strengths in our technology and product portfolio. Our right to play in this new segment is similar to our expansion into automotive. Furthermore, our experience in industrial and safety grade silicon perception and sensing technologies and ADAS and autonomy provide a very competitive foundation to develop highly differentiated solution for autonomous robots, next generation industrial automation and humanoid robotics. We're incredibly excited about this opportunity for which third party estimates indicate a potential TAM of $1 trillion in the next decade. I would now like to turn the call over to Akash.

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

Thank you, Cristiano. Good afternoon, everyone. Let me begin with our third fiscal quarter results. We delivered revenues of $10.4 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $2.77, which was near the high end of our guidance range. QTL revenues of $1.3 billion and EBT margin of 71% were above the midpoint of our guidance. QCT delivered revenues of $9 billion and EBT of $2.7 billion with year-over-year growth of 11% and 22%, respectively. QCT EBT margin of 30% was at the high end of our guidance range. QCT handset revenues increased 7% year-over-year to $6.3 billion, reflecting strong demand for premium tier handsets enabled by our Snapdragon 8 Elite platform. QCT IoT revenues grew 24% year-over-year to $1.7 billion. The outperformance relative to expectations was driven by increased demand for our Snapdragon AR1 chipset, the clear industry leader in the emerging AI smart glasses category.

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

We delivered another record quarter in QCT Automotive with revenues of $984 million, an increase of 21% year-over-year driven by content growth in new vehicle launches with our Snapdragon Digital Chassis platform. Lastly, we returned $3.8 billion to stockholders, including $2.8 billion in stock repurchases and $967 million in dividends, aligned with our commitment to return 100% of our free cash flow in the fiscal year. Before turning to guidance, a quick reminder that our fourth quarter and fiscal 2025 includes 13 weeks relative to a 14-week quarter in the year-ago period. For the fourth quarter, we are forecasting revenues of $10.3 billion-$11.1 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $2.75-$2.95. In QTL, we estimate revenues of $1.25 billion-$1.45 billion and EBT margins of 69%-73%. In QCT, we expect revenues of $9 billion-$9.6 billion and EBT margins of 27%-29%.

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

We anticipate QCT handset revenues to grow approximately 5% sequentially, consistent with typical historical trends. Despite lower Apple revenues, we estimate QCT IoT revenues to be flat sequentially and QCT Automotive revenues to reach $1 billion in the fourth fiscal quarter. Lastly, we estimate non-GAAP operating expenses to be approximately $2.35 billion in the quarter. In closing, we're very pleased with our performance in fiscal 2025 as we continue to execute on the financial metrics we outlined at our Investor Day last year. Based on the midpoint of our guidance, we are positioned to deliver revenue and non-GAAP EPS growth of 12% and 16%, respectively, relative to fiscal '24. We are forecasting fiscal '25 to be the second consecutive year of greater than 15% year-over-year growth in total QCT non-Apple revenues.

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

We anticipate QCT, IoT, and automotive revenues to grow by approximately 20% and 35% respectively, reinforcing our confidence in achieving our fiscal 2029 target of $22 billion in combined automotive and IoT revenues. We are pleased to see our customer relationships strengthening during a time of global trade volatility, including the upcoming global ADAS launch with BMW and the recently signed strategic agreement with Xiaomi. We remain focused on maximizing shareholder returns by executing across a broad range of growth and diversification opportunities while maintaining operating discipline. Lastly, I'd like to invite you to tune into our upcoming Snapdragon Summit event taking place on September 23 to 25 to learn more about our technology, leadership, and new product launches. This concludes our prepared remarks. Back to you, Mauricio.

[Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan, Head of Investor Relations at Qualcomm]

Thank you, Akash.

[Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan, Head of Investor Relations at Qualcomm]

Operator, we're now ready for questions.

[Operator]

Thank you.

[Operator]

To cue a question, press star, then number one. To withdraw your question, press star, two. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the numbers. One moment please for the first question. Our first question comes from the line of Joshua Buchalter with TD Cowen. Please proceed with your questions.

[Joshua Buchalter, Director of Equity Research at Cowen Inc]

Hey guys, thanks for taking my question. I wanted to start with the handset market. I think you just spoke to 5% growth in the September quarter despite the lower share that you communicated at Apple. Can you speak to the drivers there? I think Xiaomi was up meaningfully in the quarter, which is typical in the June quarter. I think investors are worried about some level of pull ins. Are you seeing any evidence of that specifically related to China?

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

Thank you. Hi Josh, it's Akash.

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

We're not seeing any evidence of pull-in. I think the upside that we guided in the September quarter and hence that revenue stream is really driven by our new product launch. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we're going to announce our new chip at the end of September and we are already working with several OEMs for launch of new devices based on a tremendous interest in it. What you're seeing is really people getting ready for launch of new devices.

[Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan, Head of Investor Relations at Qualcomm]

Got it.

[Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan, Head of Investor Relations at Qualcomm]

Thank you. To follow-up, I wanted to ask about the data center business and the hyperscale engagement you mentioned. Specifically, any details you can give us on the scope of that engagement. Is that for an ARM-based CPU? Is it an accelerator? You mentioned fiscal 2028 as potential if that converts. Is that the right time frame to think about contribution from your data center business more broadly at other customers as well? Thank you and congrats on the results.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Thank you. Thank you. Joshua, this is Cristiano. We can't really disclose more other than what we said in the script. We are in advanced discussions, we have been executing on a product. As we said before, we always felt that we had IP that was very relevant to the data center. I think the Alphawave provides complementary IP, allows us to build custom SoC products, and we're pleased with the way we're developing this. I am sure we'll be able to share more as we probably conclude some of those discussions.

[Operator]

Our next question from the line of Samik Chatterjee with J.P. Morgan. Please receive your questions.

[Samik Chatterjee, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at J.P.Morgan]

Hi, thanks for taking my questions, Cristiano. Maybe I can follow-up on the data center roadmap here or the sort of thought process and strategy around it. Less so, maybe timing. In terms of how do you envision sort of Alphawave integrating into the sort of portfolio, the stack capability that you have currently, and in relation to just thinking about sort of how you're going about selecting customers that you want to approach for this, what's typically sort of a, in terms of thinking about customization relative to standardization of the chipset, how you're sort of thinking about deal sizes that would make sense for you in the longer run for this business. Any thoughts around that?

[Samik Chatterjee, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at J.P.Morgan]

Thank you and I'll follow-up.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Very good.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Thank you for your question. I know there's a lot of topics in that question. I'll try to probably give an overview. As we said it before and we said in the script, we have been focused on building two products. One is ability to leverage our CPU asset and that happens in two situations. One of course is a general purpose CPU. We've been very focused on hyperscalers. They have first party workloads for ARM- compatible CPU. The other one is the head unit for inference clusters. As AI starts to get scale and we really look at how we're starting to see inference taking over training, there's a new dynamic in the marketplace which is about ability to be efficient with tokens per dollar as well as energy. That creates an opportunity for us.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

For that we have been building accelerator cards and we will be building a rack as well and those are the two areas that we're building. Product roadmap, we're very focused on customers. They have the ability to put first party workloads or inference cluster. The Alphawave IP is important. It provides us the ability to scale out and provide connectivity. We believe it's leading connectivity in the industry and that should inform you the type of customers that we've been focusing on. We think there's a very large TAM. As you know, there is an opportunity for Qualcomm to play if you have leading IP. Of course, as this is a new market for us and we have been planning for it, we're going to be very careful about making disclosures. We're going to wait until they become factual and we're excited about the engagement we have today.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

We are in advanced negotiations with one significant customer and hopefully that creates a halo effect that could validate our platform and create other opportunities down the road. Thank you.

[Samik Chatterjee, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at J.P.Morgan]

Thank you for that and for my

[Samik Chatterjee, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at J.P.Morgan]

Follow-up in the handsets business for the fiscal three here, you had 7% revenue growth year-over-year, which I think did sort of miss modestly. You were guiding to last quarter for about 10% growth. Maybe if you can share any color in terms of if you did see any parts of the month that were weaker than you expected in the quarter. Similarly, when I think about your guidance for fiscal fourth quarter here, it looked like you're heading toward a high single digit growth even with the impact of Apple. Maybe in part the strength is because that seems like a pretty robust number for fiscal fourth quarter, even with the loss of Apple revenues?

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO at Qualcomm]

Yeah, same. It's Akash. On the third quarter, we had a slightly weaker mix than we had expected. As you know, this is a quarter that is seasonally weaker for us as there are no flagship launches. That mix is really, the weaker mix is more than offset by the strength you're seeing in the September quarter, where, as I mentioned earlier to Josh's question, we're launching the new chip, we have flagship launches coming in at the end of the quarter, and we're seeing the demand increase because of that reason.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Stacy Rasgon with Bernstein Research. Please proceed with your questions.

[Stacy Rasgon, Managing Director and Senior Analyst at AB Bernstein]

Hi , guys.

[Stacy Rasgon, Managing Director and Senior Analyst at AB Bernstein]

Thanks for taking my question, given the guidance into September, but the dynamics around Apple and everything else, I mean, what would you consider normal seasonal in the December quarter? How should we think about drivers as you currently see them, against that normal, against that seasonal trend? How should we expect things if there's anything else funky going on in December that we should know about that would influence results versus what might be more typical?

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

Yes, Stacy, it's Akash. Assuming you're asking about the December quarter, we expect normal revenue seasonality for all businesses, of course, adjusted for the lower share in Apple phone launches that we previously discussed, but nothing else to highlight in all other businesses.

[Stacy Rasgon, Managing Director and Senior Analyst at AB Bernstein]

I mean, what would you consider normal seasonal then?

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

We're not specifically guiding the quarter at this point, but I think you've seen a trend in the last several years and you'd expect the same quarterly trend, just adjusted for the lower Apple volume for the share we've provided.

[Stacy Rasgon, Managing Director and Senior Analyst at AB Bernstein]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of Joe Moore with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question. Mr. Moore, your line is live for question. Perhaps you're on mute.

[Operator]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question will be from the line of Chris Caso with Wolfe Research.

[Chris Caso, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Yes, thank you.

[Chris Caso, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Wolfe Research]

If I could just expand upon, you know, some of the commentary with regard.

[Chris Caso, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Wolfe Research]

To the December quarter.

[Chris Caso, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Wolfe Research]

My understanding is last year the Chinese OEMs started pulling forward the launch a little bit of some of the flagship devices. Also, you know, as we were last year, there was an extra week in the quarter. I guess maybe just some more granularity on the puts and takes on December, taking that into account, you know.

[Chris Caso, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Wolfe Research]

You know, how much, how much of a lift is that in the December quarter?

[Chris Caso, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Does that turn into more of a headwind as you go to the March quarter?

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

Yeah, I think, Chris, the business remains very strong. Whether you look at the Android business, Automotive, IoT, all the trends continue with the growth rates that we've previously outlined for the business. There's nothing significant or unique that I want to point out there. I think we've talked about the Apple share dynamic, so that is a factor. Outside of that, you should think of this as a very strong quarter for us seasonally. The strongest quarter for us is December and that'll still be true regardless of the lower Apple share.

[Chris Caso, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Got it. Okay.

[Chris Caso, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Wolfe Research]

If I could follow on with the data center business, and you understand that, you know, you can't talk so much about, you know, some of the progress and design wins that you hope to have on that until they become factual. What about from a spending side and, you know, moving into a new line of business? You know, what's going to be the impact on spending and then as Alphawave closes, what will be the effect of that on sort of revenue, expenses, and EPS?

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

Yeah. From a spend perspective, Chris, the way we've managed OpEx over the last several years, you've seen very small growth in OpEx over the last four years, and the way we've managed it is really kind of absorbing the salary increases and reallocating existing spend towards diversification and growth.

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

The hiring as we go forward is really going to be focused on new skills that are required to execute on our plan. To the extent that there are new skills required to execute on the data center diversification assets, we will invest in that. Outside of that, we plan to be pretty careful managing OpEx going forward.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Ross Seymore with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your questions.

[Ross Seymore, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank]

Hi guys, thanks for letting me ask a couple questions. Just want to get into the OEM side. Akash, you've been very clear about what's happening on the Apple side of things, but recently you've seen Samsung launch a couple models with its own processor.

[Ross Seymore, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank]

I just wondered how do you compare?

[Ross Seymore, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank]

Contrast that against the x85 that you guys are rightly excited about going forward?

[Ross Seymore, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank]

Do you think you will.

[Ross Seymore, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank]

Maintain the 100% share on the Galaxy S generation? Or is that decision not quite made yet? Any color on that would be helpful.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Hey Ross, thanks for the question. We have been talking about the framework of our relationship with Samsung and we have been executing multi-year, multi-generation agreement with Samsung and we have defined the new baseline of our share in the order of 75%. Anything above that is upside. That is our planning assumption and when we outperform I think we end up, you started to see what you saw in Galaxy S25. Competing against a Samsung own platform is nothing new for Qualcomm. We have been doing that for decades but I think historically we have seen a relationship with Samsung continue to move up to highest level of share and that is the baseline assumption. 75% is the baseline. That is the contracted share. Everything above that is upside.

[Ross Seymore, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank]

Thank you for that color. I guess as a follow-up, and it probably would align to that also, within handsets, you've talked about at least the premium tier, flagship tier, of having roughly double digit ASP or content increases going forward with all the capabilities that you're offering.

[Ross Seymore, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank]

Does that still hold true?

[Ross Seymore, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank]

Does it accelerate, decelerate with the x85? Just any update on that would be great.

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

Yeah. If you think about our Android business in fiscal '25, it grew over fiscal '24 by approximately 10%, so that is higher than the target we'd set at Investor Day. It is a reflection of the strength of our roadmap, our competitive positioning, and the fact that this is a market where the volume is moving up to higher tiers where Qualcomm has a very strong position. The other thing I just want to highlight is we did give a metric both in my and Cristiano's prepared remarks: over the last two years, kind of our non-Apple revenue stream in QCT has grown annually at more than 15%. That should give you a key benchmark as you think about how the company is positioned to grow going forward as well. This aligns with the fiscal '29 targets we set at Investor Day.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Tal Liani with Bank of America. Please receive your questions. Tal, your line is live for question. Perhaps you're on mute.

[Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan, Head of Investor Relations at Qualcomm]

There we go.

[Tal Liani, Technology Analyst at Bank of America]

About China and fits the proportion of China is going up.

[Tal Liani, Technology Analyst at Bank of America]

If Samsung, you said you're working.

[Tal Liani, Technology Analyst at Bank of America]

With an assumption of 75% for Samsung.

[Tal Liani, Technology Analyst at Bank of America]

If Samsung is going to go down from 100% for the Galaxy to.

[Operator]

75, China would further go up in.

[Operator]

Percentage of QCT revenues.

[Operator]

How do you see the China growth trends when it comes to the domestic?

[Operator]

Market and international markets?

[Operator]

What's the outlook from your perspective?

[Operator]

What's the risk of competition within the Chinese market?

[Operator]

Thanks.

[Operator]

I have just a follow-up question.

[Operator]

On margins but I'll keep it separate.

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

Tal, our position in China continues to be very strong. I think the evidence of that is the agreement that we announced with Xiaomi during the quarter. This is a multi-year agreement for premium phones with increasing volumes every year. They're going to use our chip for launches within China and globally as well. In addition, they'll also be the first OEM to launch with our next Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, which comes out over the next couple months. The relationship really has expanded over the last couple years. We've gone from phones to automotive, they introduced smart glasses with our chips, wearables, tablets. It is a very broad relationship and it's just an example of relationships we have with other Chinese OEMs as well. You should consider this as a very well-positioned, sustained business for us.

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

Within Samsung, as you can see, in fiscal 2026 they launched most of their devices with our chip, but they did launch flip with their own. We are slightly below 100% share. As we go to next year, I think our agreement, as Cristiano outlined, carries over and we're in a very good position to maintain our scale there as well.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Let me just maybe add a different perspective. I'm going to agree with Akash, but I'll provide probably a comment of questions that we usually we don't get. Look, we have been doing business in China for 30 years. We actually started down at the 3G and I think what we learned by doing business in China, we actually learned how to move at China's speed. I think if you look at the position in Qualcomm in China, they only improve over the years. As Akash outlined, not only have we been well positioned in the phone business, we're also positioned with some of the fastest growing OEMs in the auto business and that is expanding now into industrial, into robotics and other areas.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Another way to look into this is Qualcomm has become a very competitive company and learned how to compete in China and have been serving well, I think the market. We expect that to continue to be the case.

[Tal Liani, Technology Analyst at Bank of America]

Got it.

[Tal Liani, Technology Analyst at Bank of America]

Maybe just a question on margins, a quick one.

[Tal Liani, Technology Analyst at Bank of America]

I see that when I look at.

[Tal Liani, Technology Analyst at Bank of America]

Gross margin, operating margin, I see that there is.

[Tal Liani, Technology Analyst at Bank of America]

Kind of you manage to.

[Tal Liani, Technology Analyst at Bank of America]

Maintain a very healthy operating margin despite the fluctuations in Apple revenues. I just want to ask you a question I'm getting from investors quite often. What are the implications of the decline in Apple? What are the implications on margins? Are they positive or negative?

[Tal Liani, Technology Analyst at Bank of America]

Thanks.

[Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO at Qualcomm]

Yeah, I think we're very happy with the margin profile of the business. I mean, we will be at close to 30% margin this year, which is the target we have set for the long term. As you look forward, the growth opportunity that we have in auto IoT far exceeds the scale of the Apple revenue. I think we have the ability to continue to grow revenue and manage the margin profile as a result of it and no change to our long-term target margin versus what we've said in the past.

[Tal Liani, Technology Analyst at Bank of America]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our last question comes from the line of Ben Reitzes with Melius Research. Please proceed with your questions.

[Ben Reitzes, Managing Director and Head of Technology Research at Melius]

Hey guys, thanks a lot, I appreciate it. I wanted to ask about the data center. You know you're buying Alphwave for $2.4 billion. You have big ambitions there, it sounds like for FY '28. What are your thoughts on doing, you know, having more of a tuck-in acquisition strategy there or even going bigger, you know, to get big fast and get ahold of customers? If you have such great IP, I was just wondering if you could kind of give your, a little bit more of the strategy, is it more Alphawaves coming or would you ever consider a bigger acquisition?

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Thanks. Thanks Ben for your question. Look, at this point we're very focused on actually driving AlphaWave IP Group to closure in building our product roadmap. I think we feel that it provides the IP that is complementary to what we have and allows us to build a competitive position. This is a new initiative for Qualcomm as I outlined and like we have done for the rest of our business. As opportunity becomes available, always going to be looking how to complement the roadmap. Right now we're really focused on driving AlphaWave IP Group to closure.

[Ben Rice, Analyst]

All right, thanks.

[Ben Rice, Analyst]

Can I just ask a quick question.

[Ben Rice, Analyst]

Follow-up on your comments around Gemini and Galaxy AI use in the Android area and just can you just draw that out a little more? Obviously there's a perception that the Apple products are a little behind in AI and what that means for you over the long term, whether you're really optimistic about that, maybe even past.

[Ben Rice, Analyst]

Your fiscal.

[Ben Rice, Analyst]

First quarter and just any bit more color there?

[Ben Rice, Analyst]

Thanks.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Yes, consistent to what we have been saying, we are starting to see AI use cases on phones gain traction and there's also another interesting data point. I think if you look at the overall share of AI models, you see Gemini increasing dramatically over other models. We have seen, I think, the advantage of the Android ecosystem in terms of majority of AI as more and more use cases become agentic or you start to see AI as part of the applications. I expect that it creates excitement about the Android ecosystem, expands its SAM and drives upgrade cycles. Those are all positive things from a mobile business, so I will not, I will think that what AI is doing is making connectivity more relevant again, especially because voice utilization is driving more computing, more capable devices, and is actually changing the use cases and the rate of utilization.

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

It's very encouraging what I said in the call about 3x between Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S25 and I think I expect that to continue to accelerate.

[Operator]

Thank you. This concludes today's question and answer session. Mr. Amon, do you have anything further to add before joining the call?

[Cristiano Amon, President and CEO at Qualcomm]

Thank you all for attending the call. I'd like to thank all of our employees, our partners, and we appreciate following Qualcomm. We'll continue to execute on our strategy. We feel that the company is on the right trajectory, especially as we look for growth and diversification beyond handsets, and AI continues to be a great opportunity for us. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Akash Palkhiwala, CFO and COO
• Akash Palkhiwala, CFO
• Cristiano Amon, President and CEO
• Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan, Head of Investor Relations

Analysts

• Ben Rice, Analyst
• Ben Reitzes, Managing Director and Head of Technology Research at Melius
• Samik Chatterjee, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at J.P.Morgan
• Stacy Rasgon, Managing Director and Senior Analyst at AB Bernstein
• Chris Caso, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Wolfe Research
• Tal Liani, Technology Analyst at Bank of America
• Ross Seymore, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank
• Joshua Buchalter, Director of Equity Research at Cowen Inc