Qualcomm is laying off 1,258 employees. The information was revealed in the filings the company recently made with the California Employment Development Department (via CNBC). Among 1,258 layoffs, 1,064 people are being terminated from Qualcomm’s office in San Diego and 194 people are being let go from that in Santa Clara. The company had around 51,000 employees in September 2022. So, a layoff of 1,258 employees accounts for 2.5% of the workforce.
According to Qualcomm, it is laying off employees due to “uncertainty in the macroeconomic and demand environment”. However, Qualcomm isn’t the only chipmaking company that is reducing its workforce. Major semiconductor firms around the globe are laying off employees due to what is being reported as the sharpest downfall in the chip industry. Many technology-focused companies are also laying off employees due to lowering demand for consumer products and the ongoing economic downturn.
Back in March, Samsung laid off around 3% of the workforce from the chipmaking division. A couple of months later, Apple terminated a substantial number of employees. Similarly, Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft have also laid off a total of 70,000 personnel in recent times to cut operating costs and adjust to challenging economic times. More layoffs are expected to take place at big tech companies in the near future.
Restructuring at Qualcomm
When CNBC reached out to Qualcomm on the matter, the company said “Given the continued uncertainty in the macroeconomic and demand environment, we expect to take additional restructuring actions to enable continued investments in key growth and diversification opportunities. While we are in the process of developing our plans, we currently expect these actions to consist largely of workforce reductions, and in connection with any such actions we would expect to incur significant additional restructuring charges, a substantial portion of which we expect to incur in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023. We currently anticipate these additional actions to be substantially completed in the first half of fiscal 2024”.
Author’s Note: Huawei, which is currently one of the biggest customers of Qualcomm, has developed a new in-house chipset, the Kirin 9000s. The Chinese company is expected to develop more in-house chipsets in the near future. Going forward, Huawei is expected to use proprietary SoCs in its smartphones rather than the ones from Qualcomm.
Samsung, too, is developing a new chipset, the Exynos 2400. The company plans to use this SoC instead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for the Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24+, and Galaxy S24 Ultra in many regions around the globe. So, the demand for chipsets from Qualcomm is expected to go down even further, making things even worse.
