660 5G designs announced or in development
Following the Wednesday announcement of its third quarter earnings and detailing a multi-year agreement with Huawei, Qualcomm stock jumped more than 12% at its height. The San Diego-based company turned in revenue above the midpoint of prior guidance and showed an 8% increase in earnings per share to $0.86.
Qualcomm reported $4.9 billion in Q3 revenues with the QCT business up 7% year-over-year to $3.8 billion and QTL revenues down nearly 20% compared to this time last year to $1 billion.
CEO Steve Mollenkopf also said on a call for investors that it has reached a long-term global patent licensing deal with Huawei, an outstanding issue the settlement of which will add $1.8 billion in Q4 income from royalty payments. “We are pleased to have successfully reached resolution with Huawei. With the signing of the Huawei agreement, we are now entering a period in which we have multi-year agreements with every major handset OEM.”
On that front, the company touted 660 designs announced or in development using 5G platforms, including from the 6-, 7-, and 8-series of SoCs and the X55 modem. Mollenkopf said, “Our calendar year 2020 5G forecast of 175 to 225 million handsets remains unchanged with our bias now towards the upper end of that range.”
Click here for full Q3 financial documents.
Millimeter wave and Release 16
Qualcomm is very active in the 3GPP standards-setting process; that group recently finalized Release 16 which evolves the 5G New Radio standards to include enhancements to ultra-reliable, low-latency communications, 5G for non-standalone and standalone operation in the unlicensed 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands (NR-U), more precision position for industrial internet of things and a whole bevy of other enhancements with a focus on supporting use cases beyond consumer mobility.
Mollenkopf said Release 16 “will greatly expand the reach of 5G to new services, spectrum and deployments. Our work driving 5G technology evolution…continues” with Release 17 and advanced technology research for Release 18.
Regarding millimeter wave spectrum, Verizon and AT&T used this as their 5G go-to-market and Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon updated on global traction saying today millimeter wave support is a requirement for all flagship devices and will penetrate lower tiers over time.
He said “traction of millimeter wave technology is moving kind of as we expected.” U.S. deployments continue to ramp, Japan has launched, Korea and Russia are forecast for this year, and spectrum auctions in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and Finland set the stage for 2021 commercialization. “We don’t disclose specific share but we do have significant technology leadership in millimeter wave and it has been showing in some expansion of our designs.”
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