Mobile SoC

Pull up a chair — here's how I'm thinking about the back half of fiscal 2026. For Q2, I'm modeling around $10.78B in revenue. That's a modest step up from the March quarter and reflects the typical seasonal pattern where the second half of the handset cycle starts to ramp ahead of flagship launches. Gross margin I'm penciling in near 53.4% — we're still under a bit of mix pressure, but the worst of the sequential compression should be behind us as channel inventory normalizes and Nuvia-based platforms scale into premium tiers. By Q3, I see us stepping up to roughly $11.5B as Snapdragon volumes accelerate and the licensing annuity keeps grinding out its predictable dollars. Gross margin should recover a touch toward 54% as product mix improves and we capture higher ASP per device. Operating leverage does the heavy lifting — I'm projecting operating income around $2.99B, and net income normalizing to about $2.75B after Q1's reported figure was lifted by a sizable one-time tax benefit that I don't expect to repeat. Two assumptions I'm leaning on: (1) the handset market stabilizes in the mid-to-high single-digit growth range as premium-tier demand holds, and (2) automotive keeps compounding its design-win pipeline — that second curve is increasingly real with every quarter of OEM wins across cockpit and ADAS. The top risk I keep watching is Apple and the timing of their internal modem transition — that's the headline swing factor for the second half. If they pull internal silicon forward, both our chipset slot and a slice of royalty take a hit; if they slip, we get an extra tailwind. Net-net, the QTL annuity keeps doing its job, Snapdragon carries the day, and automotive transitions from story to actual line item.