QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOMM) has reported its earnings for the quarter leading up to March today. The reported earnings per share stood at $1.01 on revenues the company took in of $4.94 Billion. The company has been on an excellent run as of late beating rivals, most notably Intel, into the mobile device market by providing a product more suited to the needs of its customers. The company is benefiting from the huge growth in the smart phone and tablet markets leaving it in a prime legacy position to defend its lead.
Analysts had expected the firm to perform well in the first quarter due to the increased demand for the company’s products. Expectations by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were for revenues of $4.8 billion. The same analysts had a consensus expectation of earnings of $0.96 per share. In the fourth quarter of 2011 the company beat analysts across the board posting earnings of $0.97 per share on revenues of $4.68 billion.
Intel, (NASDAQ:INTC) which reported its results yesterday after the market closed, is the firms biggest rival though Qualcomm has outrun the manufacturer in the mobile market. Qualcomm does not build its own processors but rather its popular Snapdragon system on chips runs off of ARM designed cores. The company is set to face Intel head on for the first time this year or early in 2013 as both firms gear up to offer chipsets to run the Windows 8 system on tablets. Microsoft, (NASDAQ:MSFT) will offer two diiferent versions of the system on tablets, one for ARM cores and one for Intel’s.
That battle will be key for Qualcomm going forward. If it can beat Intel’s new generation of mobile centered processors it will have earned it’s spot in the market and will continue to revel in it for some time to come. However the company still faces a great deal of competition from other manufacturers of ARM based chips such as Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) As the market for smart phones and tablets heats up around the world both companies will benefit from the increased sales but ultimately it is down to manufacturers to choose the processors and Qualcomm will have to keep up technologically.
The company should learn from Intel’s mistake in the design of the iPad. Apple decided the company’s Atom chips weren’t efficient enough to run their system and designed teir own instead. That cost Intel the mobile market that is selling huge share of chips these days.
