Huawei is growing its market share and it’s affecting Qualcomm’s sales. The Chinese giant has had it rough this year but it has managed to turn things in its favor.
Steve Mollenkopf, Qualcomm’s Chief Executive Officer, told Reuters that Huawei had stolen market share from its (Qualcomm) customers (Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo). The San Diego based company’s revenue and profit for the last quarter were less than predicted, resulting in its shares dropping by up to 6%.
It isn’t that Huawei’s chips best those from Qualcomm, but since more Huawei (and Honor) phones are flying off the shelves, it means fewer phones powered by Snapdragon chipsets are being sold. Which means Qualcomm is selling fewer chips to its clients.
Mr. Mollenkopf is reported to have said “Huawei was very aggressive in terms of making sure they built their market share there because they couldn’t sell things internationally. And the reaction of the (other Chinese phone makers) was, ‘Let’s go as fast as we can to 5G, because there’s a great opportunity there,’ even to the point of saying, ‘Let’s cancel 4G models.”
Things are supposed to get better for Qualcomm next year when 5G picks up. This new development transforms Huawei from a customer to a rival for Qualcomm. The Chinese manufacturer is known to use Snapdragon SoCs in some of its devices. However, following the US ban in May, Huawei has had to fall back to its own chipsets or use MediaTek’s processors. The last Snapdragon-powered Huawei phone is the Huawei Y7 2019 which was released in March.
(Source)
