Qualcomm to cut 4,500 jobs

Qualcomm will cut 4,500 full-time jobs. That equates to 15 percent of the workforce. The layoffs would not affect the company’s mobile processor roadmap. In addition, the company has confirmed that it is considering splitting itself.

The company is under pressure from shareholders to make changes, presumably due to increased competition from Chinese chipmakers and Taiwanese MediaTek. The layoff is part of a package of savings of 1.4 billion dollars, currently approximately 1.3 billion euros, Qualcomm reports.

According to the processor maker, the layoffs will not affect the company’s ‘core technology roadmap’. Qualcomm plans to release the Snapdragon 820 at the end of this year, the first soc with its own Kryo microarchitecture. It does want to save on things that do not fall under ‘core technology’, but the company does not say what it will save on.

In addition, Qualcomm says it will look critically at its structure, “including possible options to split the company.” A rumor came out on Tuesday that the company would consider it. Qualcomm would then split itself into two companies, one dedicated to making processors and the other to licensing Qualcomm’s patents.

Update, 12:55: Qualcomm CEO George Davis says in a comment on the quarterly results that Qualcomm is doing less than expected, because a “big customer”, most likely Samsung, decided to use its own soc instead of the Snapdragon 810. Samsung did that with the Galaxy S6. In addition, deliveries of devices that use a Snapdragon 810 are not going as well as expected. Davis is probably referring to the HTC One M9, which also led to disappointing figures at HTC itself.