Irwin Jacobs and six co-founders from defense contractor Linkabit started Qualcomm in San Diego in July 1985 as a contract research center. Its first big commercial product, OmniTRACS in 1988, gave trucking fleets such as Schneider National two-way satellite messaging and tracking, and that money funded research into CDMA. The CTIA had backed the rival TDMA standard in 1989, but Qualcomm’s three 1989 patents attacked CDMA’s near-far problem with network-directed power control, plus soft handoffs between towers and variable rate encoders. Trial networks in San Diego and New York City, and regional carriers like NYNEX and Ameritech, pushed the CTIA to adopt Qualcomm’s standard in 1993.

Losing an estimated $400 million a year on base stations, Qualcomm sold handset manufacturing to Kyocera and infrastructure to Ericsson in 1999 and became a fabless chip designer and patent licensor, and its stock rose 2,621% that year. Snapdragon arrived in 2007. Its $47 billion bid for NXP stalled when Chinese regulators delayed approval during the ZTE dispute, and Qualcomm dropped it in July 2018 after extending its tender offer 29 times. Broadcom’s hostile $121 billion bid was blocked by President Donald Trump in early 2018 on national security grounds. Under CEO Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm bought Nuvia for $1.4 billion in 2021 and Arduino in late 2025.

• Qualcomm collects an estimated $20 on nearly every smartphone sold, whoever makes it.
• About 80% of revenue comes from the QCT chip division and about 19% from QTL licensing, backed by over 130,000 patents.
• It fought FTC and European Union antitrust actions and settled a licensing battle with Apple in 2019.
• Arm sued over the Nuvia deal and threatened to cancel Qualcomm’s license in 2024, then withdrew the threat in early 2025 after a partial jury win for Qualcomm.
• Automotive deals for Arriver and Autotalks and a BMW hands-free driving partnership extend its push beyond phones.