Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) Upgrades Its Snapdragon 810 Processor with A 9 LTE Advanced Speed

On December 11, Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) announced that it will be featuring 9 LTE- Advanced Speeds in its new 810 Snapdragon processor. It is important to mention here that the company was planning on featuring 6 LTE- Advanced Speeds previously. The 810 processor, where initially would have been able to download content at a speed of 300 MB per second, will now be downloading the data at an increased speed of 450 MB per second. The upload speed, however, will still be 50 MB per second.

What is interesting to note here is the fact that the company has not announced any such upgradation for its new MDM 9235 stand alone modem for cell phones. The Snapdragon processor is based upon MDM 9235 modem.

A number of market experts are of the view that this is quite a strategic move on part of Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM).

In the recent earnings call of Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), the management of the company revealed that the revenues from its MSM segment were going down significantly, reflecting a decrease in its premium modems as compared to the thin chips. To put in another way, the company earns greater revenues when it sells snapdragon processors instead of the stand alone modems for cellular phones.

The premium tier users of Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) use snapdragon integrated processors, and not the low end chips. Those customers, who look forward to implementing the Snapdragon 805 in their space, would have to get a stand-alone modem together with a stand-alone applications processor: that is, if the two are not incorporated before.

Some of the major customers of Qualcomm’s (NASDAQ:QCOM) chips, for instance Lenovo, LG and Samsung are looking for application processors and cellular chips. Qualcomm must have to ensure that these companies do not contact Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) for stand-alone processors at low prices.

Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) is no doubt known for its best cellular modems, but the company has also designed some remarkable application processors for the smartphones over the years. The company has improved its Snapdragon by integrating it with 9 LTE modem instead of the 6 LTE one, making sure that the customers would think twice before they paired their Qualcomm modem with some other application processor.

The revenue figures of Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) show that the company is the leading one when it comes to smartphone processors. However, some of the customers of Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) are conducting some experiments by pairing the Qualcomm applications processors with other stand-alone processors. For instance, LG recently released its G3 smartphone, which is paired with LG’s processor and Intel’s advanced modem. If the phone sells at high volumes, chances are that other companies would also want to do the same.

Coming to the stock prices of Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), the company, on the last trading day of December 23, 2014, started its stocks at a price of $74.61 and closed at a price of $74.60, after hitting the highest price of $75.12. Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) has a total market capitalization of $123.62 billion.