TLDR
- Qualcomm renewed its global patent licensing deal with Apple, effective April 1, 2027.
- QCOM stock ticked up 0.2% following the news, even as the Nasdaq 100 slid broader.
- Financial terms and duration of the new agreement were not disclosed.
- Apple keeps shifting to its own modem chips, but still needs Qualcomm’s cellular patents.
- Qualcomm is pushing into data centers, targeting $15 billion in revenue there by fiscal 2029.
Qualcomm (QCOM) stock rose 0.2% on Thursday after the company confirmed a renewed patent licensing agreement with Apple (AAPL). The deal takes effect April 1, 2027, and gives investors some clarity on a partnership that has been anything but smooth over the years.
Neither company shared the financial terms or the length of the new agreement. But the announcement alone was enough to help Qualcomm claw back some ground during a rough day for the broader Nasdaq 100.
Apple and Qualcomm go way back, and not always in a friendly way. Apple sued Qualcomm in 2017, calling its royalty model excessive, and the two sides fought it out in court for two years before settling in 2019. That settlement laid the groundwork for the licensing relationship they still have today.
Since then, Apple has been working hard to cut the cord. The company bought Intel’s modem business and has been rolling out its own in-house “C1” cellular chips. The goal is simple: stop paying Qualcomm every time an iPhone ships.
It hasn’t fully worked out that way yet. Only the iPhone 18 Pro Max U.S. models still use a Qualcomm modem, with the rest of the lineup running on Apple’s own silicon. Still, Qualcomm holds foundational patents for cellular connectivity that Apple can’t simply build around.
That’s what this new deal covers. It’s not about chips, it’s about the patents Apple’s devices lean on regardless of whose modem is inside them.
“We are pleased to extend the Apple license agreement,” said John Han, Qualcomm’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of Technology Licensing.
Qualcomm looks past Apple
Qualcomm CFO Akash Palkhiwala made clear the Apple news is just one piece of a bigger picture. Speaking with TheStreet at the Snapdragon Summit 2026, he laid out a plan to turn Qualcomm into what CEO Cristiano Amon calls a “platform company.”
“In the next two years, we’ll become this company with three major businesses: data center, smartphones, and auto/IoT,” Palkhiwala said. “Think of it as three legs of the stool with each almost equal in size.”
The smartphone side hasn’t been kind lately. Qualcomm’s handset chip sales dropped 20% year over year to $5.1 billion in the fiscal third quarter, partly due to weaker demand and rising memory costs.
Automotive is the bright spot so far. That segment posted $1.59 billion in revenue, up 61% from a year earlier, and Qualcomm expects it to hit $10 billion annually by fiscal 2029.
The data center push
Data center revenue wasn’t part of July’s earnings report, but it’s central to where Qualcomm wants to go. Palkhiwala said the segment is expected to make up $15 billion of the company’s $40 billion non-handset revenue target by fiscal 2029, up from a prior goal of $22 billion.
“We were previously not in the data center business, so that drives most of the increase,” he said.
Earlier this month, Qualcomm struck a deal with Amazon (AMZN) to build custom silicon for AI data centers. Palkhiwala confirmed the company is also working with Meta (META) and one more undisclosed hyperscaler.
He isn’t sweating potential cuts to AI spending elsewhere either. “These companies are excited to be working with us and we see data center and AI as a tremendous opportunity,” Palkhiwala said, adding that robotics could be another growth lane down the road that isn’t even counted in the current $40 billion target yet.
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