New entrant
Apple, which acquired Intel’s smartphone modem business, will join the fray in the next two years.
Sravan Kundojjala, Associate Director, commented, “After two consecutive years of shipment decline,
Qualcomm turned the tide in 2020, driven by iPhone 12 design-wins. Qualcomm executed its 5G strategy well with its multi-tier antenna-to-modem strategy in 2020 and established itself as an undisputed 5G market share leader. 5G basebands accounted for over 50 percent of Qualcomm’s total baseband revenue in 2020. However, Qualcomm and the baseband industry face a challenge to maintain healthy pricing in light of an increasing mix of lower priced 5G chips. Given the baseband industry’s consolidated nature, baseband vendors should stay away from price wars and explore new revenue-generating opportunities such as non-handsets, semiconductor content expansion, Artificial intelligence (AI), and 5G cloud gaming services.”