Qualcomm hit by LPDDR5X shortage
- Qualcomm warned on February 4 that a global memory shortage would cut second-quarter sales, pushing its revenue forecast below Wall Street estimates. - Chief executive Cristiano Amon told Reuters the forecast miss was entirely due to memory shortages; handset chip sales were guided to about $6 billion. - AI server demand has pulled DRAM capacity away from phones, tightening LPDDR5X supply into 2026. (idc.com)
Qualcomm said on February 4 that a global memory shortage was hitting smartphone customers and would drag its fiscal second-quarter revenue below Wall Street estimates. (qualcomm.com) (reuters.com) The company guided for $10.2 billion to $11.0 billion in second-quarter revenue, versus an $11.12 billion analyst consensus compiled by LSEG. It forecast adjusted earnings of $2.45 to $2.65 a share, below the $2.89 consensus. (reuters.com) Chief executive Cristiano Amon told Reuters the entire forecast miss came from memory shortages at smartphone makers, especially original equipment manufacturers in China cutting inventories to match supply. (reuters.com) The bottleneck is not Qualcomm’s processors. Phones need mobile DRAM to work, and the latest premium Android devices increasingly use LPDDR5X, a faster low-power memory standard. Qualcomm said its near-term handset outlook was being hit by industry-wide memory supply constraints even as premium-phone demand stayed solid. (qualcomm.com) Qualcomm’s own numbers show why the squeeze matters. Handset chips brought in $7.824 billion in fiscal first-quarter revenue, about 74% of QCT chip sales and roughly 64% of total company revenue. (qualcomm.com) For the second quarter, chief financial officer Akash Palkhiwala said handset revenue would be about $6 billion, below a Visible Alpha estimate of $6.85 billion. Reuters reported Qualcomm shares fell 9% after hours on the guidance. (reuters.com) The shortage is tied to a broader shift in the memory business. International Data Corporation said major suppliers were steering wafer capacity toward high-bandwidth memory and other enterprise parts for artificial intelligence servers instead of conventional mobile DRAM and NAND. (idc.com) IDC said Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron were prioritizing higher-margin artificial intelligence memory, leaving less DRAM available for consumer devices. In IDC’s framing, every wafer moved to high-bandwidth memory is one less wafer for parts such as LPDDR5X in smartphones. (idc.com) That leaves Qualcomm exposed to a problem it cannot fix with chip design alone. If phone makers cannot secure enough memory, they ship fewer devices, and Qualcomm sells fewer Snapdragon processors into those launches. (reuters.com) (qualcomm.com) By April 28, Qualcomm shares had recovered to about $150, roughly flat to modestly positive for 2026, ahead of its April 29 earnings report. The shortage story now hinges less on end demand than on whether memory supply loosens fast enough for handset production to catch up. (finance.yahoo.com) (marketbeat.com)
