With smartphone sales down roughly 20% from 2025, Qualcomm used its Q4 earnings call to lay out a bigger push into AI data center chips.
Qualcomm's Q4 2026 earnings call centered on a new data center strategy as the company's core smartphone chip business shrank roughly 20% year over year. Executives described the data center push as critical to offsetting the handset slump and capturing AI infrastructure spend.
The shift puts Qualcomm in more direct competition with Nvidia, AMD, and hyperscalers' custom silicon programs — a far tougher fight than mobile chips.
This is a classic incumbent pivot under pressure: diversify into AI infrastructure or watch the core business erode. Watch whether Qualcomm can translate mobile-chip efficiency expertise into data center wins, or whether this becomes a costly distraction.
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