Qualcomm wants investors to believe the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple’s modem exit is now a solved problem and not a crisis.
For years, Job’s Mob’s iPhone modem orders were the sort of reliable cash Qualcomm could stick in the bank and forget. That era is ending, but Qualcomm chief executive Cristiano Amon seems more interested in where the next pile of money is coming from.
Amon said revenue from Job’s Mob’s 5G modem business is heading into a sharp decline, which surprised nobody in San Diego. He said Qualcomm had seen it coming and had been preparing other businesses to take the strain.
The rough handset market and fading iPhone modem sales have pushed Qualcomm to diversify, but the outfit is no longer pretending handsets are everything.
After Qualcomm’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call, Amon said supply constraints and component shortages across the semiconductor ecosystem had clipped earlier expectations.
Qualcomm’s share of 5G modems in the iPhone 18 Pro line-up is now expected to fall well below its original 20 per cent target.
Reuters reported that Job’s Mob-related revenue will fall by about 50 per cent between the September and December quarters. The handset business brought in $5.09 billion for the third quarter of 2026, down 20 per cent from the same period a year earlier.
That looks grim on paper, but Qualcomm has been shifting its pitch away from being Job’s Mob’s modem supplier.
“We kind of replaced Apple with the data centre,” Amon said.
Qualcomm now wants $5 billion in revenue from AI data centres in 2027, rising to $15 billion by 2029. That is the sort of target designed to tell investors that losing Job’s Mob is annoying, not fatal.
The company is digging into automotive chips and the industrial internet of things, where customers do not demand custom modem drama every year.
Qualcomm’s automotive segment delivered record revenue in the latest quarter, growing 61 per cent year on year. That was driven by demand for connected vehicle processors, which may be less shiny than an iPhone launch but makes better strategic sense.
The rumoured Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro could cost more than $300, and Qualcomm is expected to raise prices by double digits.
Rising wafer costs and bonkers DRAM prices mean the handset business is becoming a tougher place to make easy money. Qualcomm’s answer is to squeeze more cash from premium chips while building larger businesses outside smartphones.
Its leadership expects non-handset revenue to grow more than 60 per cent by fiscal 2027. That would go a long way towards replacing the iPhone modem cash that Job’s Mob is trying to pull in-house.
