I worked at the Q for about 10 years, and here are my insights FWIW:
1. Through my grapevine I heard that the Portland office was closing. This was announced internally last week.
2) I have not heard anything about a massive layoff. That doesn’t mean it is or isn’t going to happen. In the old days, before the company divisionalized, news from one division traveled a lot faster to other divions, because managers typically had direct reports working in other divisions. When the company was split up into divisions many years ago, that ended this cross-pollination and news travels a lot slower now. So if you have a friend who’s a VP in Division X, there’s a pretty good chance he has no idea what’s about to happen in Division Y until it actually happens.
3) As someone already noted, Qualcomm is like any other company in that, in tough times they need to control costs just like anyone else. The vast majority of QCOM’s revenue is driven by handset sales, and handset turnover time has increased greatly in the past year. With the iPhone (not a Qualcomm product) being a notable exception, people are waiting longer and longer to replace aging handsets. As the economy continues to worsen, these upgrade cycles are going to continue to lengthen.
4) QCOM’s days of explosive growth have been over for a long time. The company has matured into a solid performer with strong revenue, but they are now selling into a fairly saturated market, and they have more adversaries than allies, especially in Europe. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if European regulatory agencies managed to lock QCOM out of Euro 4G standards, similar to what happened in 2G with IS-95 CDMA essentially being outlawed in Europe in favor of GSM.
I’ve had doubts about their earnings growth potential for a long time. They’re pretty much in turn-the-crank-and-collect-the-royalties mode, but I don’t see what their next act will be when this gravy train eventually grinds to a halt.
