We’ve been hearing that Qualcomm might be looking to trim some fat after having a tough year in 2015. And as of today, the company has sent out 60-day notices to about 1300 of its 31,300 employees. The notice states that their last day will be November 20th, right before Thanksgiving. This is all according to CNBC, who ran the report this morning. There will be 130 cuts in the San Francisco Bay Area, 158 in Boulder, Colorado, and 65 job cuts in Andover, Massachusetts. While we do hate to see people lose their jobs, over something they have no control over, we did see this coming. With Samsung opting not to use Qualcomm for their flagships this year.
Samsung isn’t the only one that opted not to use Qualcomm this year. Amazon’s newest tablets that were announced yesterday, are also no longer using Qualcomm’s processors. Previously, Amazon were using Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 800-series processors in their tablets. With the Fire Tablet and Fire HD tablets announced yesterday, Amazon opted for MediaTek’s chips. Not only are they cheaper, but they don’t get as warm as the Snapdragon 810. Qualcomm makes more than just processors though. Like modems and other parts of your smartphone that you probably don’t even know about. But obviously their big money maker is in processors.
The Snapdragon 810 was a bit of a let down for many. Especially with it overheating and needing to be clocked down lower. But that’s not the only reason that Qualcomm is not doing so well in 2015. There is also intense competition in the space. From the likes of MediaTek, NVIDIA and others. With MediaTek’s new Helio series, they hope to match Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800-series processors, with the Helio X20 bringing the same power as the Snapdragon 820. A processor we should see in smartphones announced in the beginning of 2016. Which Qualcomm says runs cooler and faster. We’ll have to wait until it’s available to see for sure.
Sad day for those in San Diego, San Francisco, Boulder and Andover. We wish them all the best of luck, as well as Qualcomm. We’d hate to see another company struggle like BlackBerry and Nokia, in recent memory.