Going by the quarterly financial reports, Qualcomm, the wireless chipmaker, seems to be doing better than companies like Intel. Intel had earlier highlighted the fact that buyers are cautious while purchasing PCs owing to the increasing popularity of tablets in the last three months, clearly reinforcing the domination of mobiles over PCs.
Qualcomm, responsible for popularizing CDMA technology and mainly known for supplying wireless processors and supporting 4G LTE, has announced financial reports for this quarter that were better than what was anticipated. A 20 to 30 percent increase in Qualcomm’s revenue had been previously forecast, owing to massive growth in the mobile market. The net income increased to $1.27 billion from $1.06 billion last year. Intel, on the other hand, predicted a 2 percent decrease in their sales in the fourth quarter. Most mobile devices (both smartphones and tablets) today incorporate chips designed by Qualcomm. The chips are used in the latest devices manufactured by Apple and several devices running on the Windows Phone 8 platform are also powered by Qualcomm.
However, with the competition increasing, Qualcomm cannot afford to rest on their laurels as rival NVIDIA is tightening its grip over the tablet market, with Microsoft’s Surface and Google’s Nexus 7 running on their processor. After Microsoft launched their newest operating system, Qualcomm has been eyeing the PC market. As it is, HP, Samsung and Dell, all of whom had earlier entered into a partnership with Qualcomm, have backed off, refraining from shipping devices manufactured in the process. Therefore, Qualcomm is now making sure that schedules of launches are not given out to customers. Qualcomm is also trying to meet the increasing demands of their customers for LTE chips in the semiconductor market, with partners like TSMC providing an additional supply, confirmed Steve Mollenkopf, the CEO of Qualcomm. According to Qualcomm, 141 million chipsets were shipped in the fiscal fourth quarter, showing an 11 percent increase from last year. They are hoping to ship around 178 million units in the coming quarter.
Since the market for PCs is dwindling, even as the demand for tablets and smartphones is on a rise, the earnings of companies who deal with mobile technology are growing tremendously. Makers of PC chips, however, may be experiencing a downfall.
