Qualcomm says to expect further hit this year due to slower Snapdragon sales

Following up on its first-quarter earnings, Qualcomm as part of its Q2 2015 earnings said that it's reducing its expectations for the second half of the fiscal year due to lower sales of its Snapdragon processors.

While it's largely gone unspoken in official channels, that's basically because the Samsung Galaxy S6 opted for the Samsung Exynos processor and not the Snapdragon 810, which can be found in a number of other current high-end devices.

From Qualcomm's earnings report:

We are reducing our outlook for our semiconductor business, QCT, for the second half of fiscal 2015 primarily due to:

  • The increased impact of customer share shifts within the premium tier, which will reduce our sales of our integrated Snapdragon™ processors and skew our product mix towards modem chipsets in this tier; and
  • A decline in our share at a large customer.

Unclear is whether the second-half numbers would be a continuation of the GS6/Snapdragon 810/Exynos love triangle, or whether it's a sign that other high-end Samsung phones (like a new Galaxy Note) will also make the move to Exynos. The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 sported a Snapdragon 805 in many regions.

Source: Qualcomm (pdf)

Phil Nickinson