Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips in trouble after judge refuses to dismiss lawsuit

Phone Arena

a day ago

Qualcomm's beloved and highly-praised Snapdragon chips are in hot water after a judge refused to dismiss a patent infringement lawsuit filed against the company. If the judge rules in favor of Collabo Innovations Inc. — which filed the lawsuit — Qualcomm might be forced to change how its chipsets are manufactured.Collabo Innovations Inc. alleges that Qualcomm infringed a patent that the former had acquired from Panasonic. The patent involves a microcontroller chip that handles the shutdown processes of a system. Qualcomm had asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed, but the judge ruled that this request was premature.Judge Alan Albright said that there were ongoing disagreements about certain terms like 'microcontroller'. The judge also ruled that Qualcomm's motion to dismiss the lawsuit would be considered at a later date after further developments.These sorts of lawsuits often end up with the accused party paying a sum or royalties to the entity that had sued them. If the judge rules in favor of Collabo Innovations Inc., Qualcomm might be ordered to pay a handsome sum of money to the company. However, a harsher result may see Qualcomm being told to stop using the microcontroller chip in its Snapdragon processors entirely.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is being used in the Samsung Galaxy S25 lineup. | Image credit — Samsung This is far from the only problem that Qualcomm has to worry about nowadays. Samsung and Apple are ditching Qualcomm, and that is going to cut into the company's revenue very deeply. In fact, Qualcomm CFO Akash Palkhiwala recently revealed exactly how much its share in the iPhone 17 series was expected to fall.Furthermore, the company's rumored decisions to jack up the price of its upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 chip will only drive big customers like Samsung even further away. Samsung has been investing heavily into perfecting its Exynos processors so that it can stop relying on Snapdragon chips that cost it hundreds of millions of Dollars a year.
The Snapdragon processors are some of the most powerful chipsets that phone manufacturers can use today. However, this lawsuit — in addition to the other problems cornering the company — threaten to change the smartphone industry's landscape pretty soon.