Qualcomm Inc. to invade China market

The President and Chief Operating Officer of Qualcomm Inc. – Steve Mollenkopf – contributed to the strengthening the positions of the companys chips as the top-selling phones in the world. Qualcomms President now takes the challenge of making a more serious invasion in the Chinese market, which is considered the worlds biggest.

Steve Mollenkopf has been Chief Operating Officer of the company since 2011. People with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named, said that he was one of the candidates for the position of Chief Executive Officer at Microsoft Corp. before Qualcomm Inc. promoted him. The company is also planned to go through some other management changes, because its current Chief Executive Officer Paul Jacobs is moving to the position of Executive Chairman.

The sales of Qualcomm more than tripled and profit more than doubled during the time Mr. Jacobs headed the company in 2005. Although the companys annual revenue has increased on average by 31% over the last three years, Qualcomm Inc. forecast that the revenues growth will slow to about 8% next year.

Mr. Mollenkopf is expected to become a Chief executive Officer of the company in March this year. He made it clear that he considers cracking Chinas phone system as an urgent and critical task, because of the slow recent companys growth elsewhere. No matter that Qualcomms chips and technology are key to Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., which uses them in the iPhone and respectively, in the Galaxy devices, the fact that the company is not present in the devices on China Mobile Ltd.s network is not to be underestimated.

Qualcomms management team realizes that the company needs to become more stable in the Chinese market, particularly with China Mobile, which has millions of subscribers. Mr. Mollenkopf is also fighting against an antitrust probe by a Chinese government agency, as reported by Bloomberg earlier today.

One of the analysts working for JMP Securities – Alex Gauna, said on this occasion: “China is the single biggest swing factor right now. Its such an enormous untapped addressable market.”

According to CNN Money, the current share price of Qualcomm Inc. is 1.25% down, and its one-year return rate is 1.25% down. The 38 analysts offering 12-month price forecasts for Qualcomm Inc. have a median target of 80.00, with a high estimate of 88.00 and a low estimate of 50.00. The median estimate represents a 9.11% increase from the last price of 73.32.