Accordingly, Qualcomm Inc.'s stock - a "smartphone chip giant" - plummeted after the company reported disappointing growth in this core business segment, raising concerns that the tariff policy will cover the entire industry.
In a report released on July 30, Qualcomm said that revenue from the phone segment in the third quarter of the current fiscal year (ending on June 29) increased by only 7% and reached 6.33 billion USD. This figure is lower than the analysts' forecast of 6.48 billion USD.
This result adds to concerns about the difficulties of the underlying recovery in the chip industry. Recently, other major chipmakers such as Texas Instruments and Intel have also issued cautious forecasts, causing the market to worry that the sales recovery will hardly last.
shortly after the announcement, Qualcomm shares fell about 6% in the after-hours market. At the end of the session on July 30, Qualcomm shares decreased by 1.86% to 159.06 USD/share. Previously, the stock of the "chip giant" also fell behind the overall increase of the semiconductor group this year.
However, this San Diego-based company still forecasts quarterly revenue to end in September 2025 in the range of 10.3 - 11.1 billion USD. This is equivalent to the analysts' average forecast of 10.6 billion USD.
In the last quarter, Qualcomm's profit, after excluding some items, reached 2.77 USD/share with revenue increasing by 10% to 10.37 billion USD. These results were all slightly higher than Wall Street's forecast. The two bright spots in this report are the chip segment for the auto industry (revenue increased by 21% to 984 million USD) and the semiconductor segment for connected devices (increased by 24% to 1.68 billion USD).
Qualcomm specializes in providing processors and modems - key components of the world's most advanced smartphone lines. The chipmaker also collects a copyright fee that is calculated as a percentage of the price of a phone, regardless of whether the manufacturer uses their chip or not.
A big challenge for Qualcomm is that " Tao House" - Apple decided to make modem chips for the iPhone itself. Qualcomm had expected its supply for the device to be completely replaced, but delays in developing components for Apple have prolonged the transition. Currently, Apple has only used self-made modems in one of its low-cost iPhone models, such as the 16e model.
