- Hit hard last week due to its soft FY15 guidance, Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) gradually rallied today, closing with a 4.9% gain. Volume (21M shares) was well above a 3-month daily average of 12.3M.
- Helping Qualcomm's cause: The company announced the Snapdragon 810, all but confirmed last week to be excluded from Samsung's Galaxy S6, has landed 60+ design wins, including for LG's G Flex2 and Xiaomi's Mi Note Pro. Other OEMs using Qualcomm's next-gen flagship baseband/app processor, which features 4 powerful 64-bit cores to go with 4 low-power cores, include Microsoft, Motorola (Lenovo), and OPPO.
- Also: The WSJ has run a column noting Samsung's decision not to use the 810 was likely motivated at least in part by Samsung's wish to more frequently use its own Exynos processors within its hardware, rather than reported overheating issues.
- Samsung is counting on the use of the 14nm manufacturing process it developed with Globalfoundries to give an Exynos processor expected to go into the S6 an app performance/power consumption edge; the 810 uses a 20nm TSMC process. Qualcomm, which has maintained a 4G modem performance edge over rivals, reportedly plans to use to use the 14nm process for upcoming processors.