Qualcomm expects non-smartphone chip sales to more than double in 5 years

Qualcomm said on Tuesday that it expects $22 billion in combined revenue over the next five years from laptops, cars and other products outside its current stronghold in smartphones, a sharp growth from the latest fiscal year.

The revenue targets for the company's fiscal 2029 were disclosed at an investor event held in New York.

In fiscal 2024 that ended September 29, Qualcomm reported revenue totaling $8.32 billion from the same set of chip categories, which made up just a third of the $24.86 billion it made from smartphone chips.

San Diego, California-based Qualcomm is the world's top supplier of mobile phone chips that connect handsets to mobile data networks. It makes money off both the chips themselves and also licensing fees for its portfolio of 5G and other wireless technologies.

The company has been working to diversify its offerings, winning deals with companies including General Motors to supply chips for the dashboards and driver-assistance systems in vehicles, and collaborating closely with Microsoft and PC makers to compete against Intel and Advanced Micro Devices in the laptop market.

Qualcomm is also grappling with the long-term decline of its business from Apple, which is developing its own wireless modem chips. Akash Palkhiwala, Qualcomm's finance chief and chief operating officer, said the new categories would offset those sales losses.

"This growth in annual revenue far exceeds the scale of the Apple chipset business revenues today," he said during the event.

Qualcomm said it expects $8 billion in automotive chip revenue by fiscal 2029, and $4 billion from PCs. It expects $2 billion from augmented and mixed-reality headsets, such as those made by Meta Platforms that already feature Qualcomm chips.

The company expects $4 billion in industrial chips that help connect factory machines to networks, as well as $4 billion for chips for the internet-of-things (IoT), a broad category that includes devices such as wireless headphones and smart home gadgets such as cameras.

In the just reported fiscal 2024, the company posted a dip in IoT revenue to $5.4 billion, sharply missing its own forecast from a similar investor day in 2021 of $9 billion by fiscal 2024.

Qualcomm's shares have risen about 13.7% to this year, only about half of the 25% rise in the Nasdaq Composite.

Its business remains highly concentrated in smartphones. Together with Apple, Samsung Electronics and Xiaomi help make up more than half of the company's $39.96 billion in revenue for its most recent fiscal year.

Among the company's broader customer base, Chinese handset makers such as Oppo and Vivo play a big role, with China-headquartered firms accounting for 46% of the company's sales in its most recent fiscal year.

Published - November 20, 2024 08:56 am IST