Chipmaker Qualcomm will cut jobs worldwide in a “performance-focused reduction” tied to its annual employee review cycle, with notifications set to begin in November, CEO Cristiano Amon told staff in an internal memo on Monday, Reuters reported.
The memo did not disclose how many roles would be affected. Amon framed the move as building “a stronger performance culture” and addressing situations where the company “has consistently fallen short of expectations.” Qualcomm had about 52,000 employees globally as of September last year, most of them full-time. The company said business priorities, organisational needs, skills and expertise would be weighed in deciding the cuts.
Qualcomm runs some of its largest engineering operations outside the United States in Hyderabad and Bengaluru, which host chip design, embedded software, 5G and AI engineering teams. The company has not published a country-wise split of the planned reductions, and Qualcomm India has not commented on how many India roles will be affected or in which function.
The announcement lands as Qualcomm navigates sustained pressure in its core smartphone chip business. The company’s shares have risen just 1.5% in 2026, compared with gains of more than 12% for the S&P 500 and nearly 60% for the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. In its late-July earnings, Qualcomm forecast quarterly profit below estimates, citing rising memory prices and a faster-than-expected decline in revenue from Apple as the iPhone maker shifts to in-house modems.
The move adds Qualcomm to a widening list of global technology firms trimming headcount while expanding AI-focused teams. Oracle has been cutting thousands of India-based employees as part of a reported 30,000 global reduction; Microsoft and Meta have each restructured earlier this year, and the Zinnov-Nasscom GCC Landscape 2026 report shows 64% of new global capability centre roles in India require AI, data science or automation skills, reshaping the demand profile for the engineers Qualcomm hires in India.
