Qualcomm bets on AI chips to break smartphone reliance, but faces crowded race - Yahoo Finance

Qualcomm announced that it expects its data center chip business to generate $15 billion in sales by 2029, signaling a strategic shift away from its core smartphone chip business. This move aims to re... Read original →

Qualcomm’s pivot to data center AI chips is a defensive maneuver against the smartphone market’s structural decline. While its ARM-based efficiency appeals to Microsoft and Meta’s green-compute mandates, technical headwinds loom: SRAM and HBM memory bottlenecks will throttle AI accelerator performance, and its CPU ecosystem lacks the software completeness to rival NVIDIA’s CUDA moat. EU chip subsidies and U.S.-China decoupling inflate compliance costs, especially in advanced packaging and EDA access. Against Amazon’s Graviton and Google’s Axion—both vertically integrated—Qualcomm trades customization for entry, sacrificing long-term pricing power. If it fails to onboard at least three hyperscalers and achieve software stack compatibility by late 2027, its $15B revenue target will remain ungrounded.