Blame it on the Taiwanese
Ongoing problems with the supply of chips for smartphones is likely to hit fourth quarter profits of US electronics firm Qualcomm. Though the company saw a 17 per cent jump in profits for its third quarter, its CEO, Paul Jacobs, revealed yesterday [July 18th 2012] that its forecast for chip shipments in the current quarter was lower than the company expected due to a shortage of capacity at its main manufacturing partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.Qualcomm’s shortage relates to chips with circuitry measured at 28 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, which include some of its latest cellular communication chips that analysts believe will be used in coming devices such as Apple’s next iPhone.
Mr Jacobs added that some phone manufactuers who hads hoped to launch smartphones with its latest chips were instead delaying their debut until later in the year or had opted to use older Qualcomm chips.
In the meantime, he revealed, Qualcomm was attempting to ease the shortages through new alliances with the likes of Microelectronics Corp, Samsung Electronics and Globalfoundries.
During its third quarter Qualcomm reported a profit of $1.21 billion, up from $1.04 billion compared to the same period last year. Revenue was also up 28 per cent to $4.63 billion.
