Preview of a new war between Apple and Qualcomm

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Welcome to a super interesting earnings call. Qualcomm Q3 2026 is full of fascinating details.

Yes, I have puts. Hoping to survive IV crush but whatever. Tiny position anyway.

IDK who is buying after hours. Clearly they missed the important info.

Taking screenshots of the relevant part of above post from September 2025 because people are lazy and don’t click links.

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Ok now that you have the necessary background information from, let’s go over the 7/29/2029 (today) earnings call and slides.

Slides first.

1. I don’t think China smartphone bottomed this quarter. Strip out seasonality and you will see smartphone (industry wide) continue to implode.

2. Yes, Qualcomm has several long-term contracts and cannot raise prices as fast as they want. However, a particular comment by Akash gives away the bigger issue. More on this later.

3. This is bullshit. Selling modems to Apple is highest margin QCT business. Much more on this soon.

This is a very very bad comment. I am surprised Akash actually said this. Credit for being honest.

I knew down-spec was gona propagate as memory ate more of the BOM. The value of Qualcomm is being diluted. This is a structural shift. When smartphone OEMs realize selling down-spec of this years premium chip or last years premium chip, they won’t go back.

If you can save money on a component and consumers don’t notice, why not keep doing that?

What if the memory issue continues for another two years or more? Smartphone chips have gotten very good. I still use my Galaxy S23 Ultra (QCOM powered) and its great. Need to replace the battery at some point but other than that performance and features and functionality all good. No need to upgrade.

This is the key info.

Apple is accelerating the design-out of Qualcomm modes ahead of the April 1st 2027 licensing deal expiration.

My sense is Verizon green-lit all next-gen iPhones in 2027 to not have mmWave. This was the last real gate to a global Apple modem. Likely because Verizon has finished deploying their C-band purchased in March 2021.

Apple is preparing to re-start their holy war against QTL, as the memory crisis obliterates Android.

In the slides, there was the bullshit excuse of “capacity constraints”. Who the fuck put such a lame ass excuse into official documents? Was it you Brett Simpson?

Stacy called this excuse out and Akash immediately folded.

Do any of you know how painful FCC (and foreign equivalent) wireless certification is? Apple and Qualcomm did not on a whim at the last minute decide this! Apple must have been working on (almost) full QCOM design-out back in March/April and told them at the last minute to make it hurt as much as possible.

Nice so a small revenue from new business severely harms QCT gross margins. Nice diversification guys. Maybe Qualcomm deserves the valuation of a GUC or Alchip. Certainly they deserve a lower valuation that Mediatek, who has a real datacenter business with real scale and real accretive gross margins.

What the fuck you had this huge datacenter investor day event, showed all these fake racks and have no fucking silicon to even test?

You don’t even have a basic prototype test vehicle? It’s just RTL and Virtuoso simulations?

You clowns. 🤡

Change the brand name from Dragonfly to Vaporbullshit.

I think handset is going to get worse in 2027. Possibly even 2028.

The key takeaway from this call is that Apple is preparing for war.

• Silently started FCC qualification of a lineup of iPhones that give QCOM low-single-digit share (foldable only?) versus the prior expected 20% share around April/March.

• Waited until the last minute to inform Qualcomm to maximize pain.

• Banked modems in the meantime to have inventory once the war starts.

Someone please talk to Verizon and ask if their C-band deployment is complete.