Qualcomm is betting big on data centers as smartphone sales sink
TL;DR
With smartphone sales tanking by around 20 percent compared to 2025, Qualcomm is looking to data centers to help boost its bottom line. During its Q4 2026 earnings call, the company laid out its plans to make a splash in the AI data center business, through partnerships with companies like Amazon and Meta announced earlier this year.
Nauti's Take
The first check for small teams is whether Qualcomm’s Amazon and Meta partnerships turn into production AI workloads running on Qualcomm chips. Until there are credible customer references, deployed models, and recurring cloud revenue, the forecast remains a corporate bet.
Track those three signals before making infrastructure decisions around it.
Summary
With smartphone sales tanking by around 20 percent compared to 2025, Qualcomm is looking to data centers to help boost its bottom line. During its Q4 2026 earnings call, the company laid out its plans to make a splash in the AI data center business, through partnerships with companies like Amazon and Meta announced earlier this year.
Sources