This is not surprising to me at all. I have been predicting this for awhile now. Especially when there was a change of guard from Jacobs to Mollenkopf. Mollenkopf came from QCT, so it’s not surprising that he’s focused on chip.
I’ve also been saying don’t count out the 800 lb gorilla in the room (Intel). A couple years ago, people just laugh at me, but just look at where they are today. At IFA this year, most of the tablets that were announced were based on Intel, not QCOM. I think QCOM is being squeezed from the top by INTC and from the bottom by MediaTek. They’re walking a pretty tight rope. They don’t have the cash cow of server chip like Intel or the cheap labor like MediaTek. It will be interesting to see how this play out in the next few years.
