QUALCOMM Incorporated (QCOM) Q2 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

QUALCOMM Incorporated  (NASDAQ: QCOM) Q2 2022 earnings call dated Apr. 27, 2022

Corporate Participants:

Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan — Vice President, Investor Relations

Cristiano R. Amon — President & Chief Executive Officer

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Analysts:

Matthew D. Ramsay — Cowen and Company — Analyst

Mike Walkley — Canaccord Genuity — Analyst

Samik Chatterjee — J.P. Morgan — Analyst

Stacy Rasgon — Bernstein Research — Analyst

Tal Liani — Bank of America — Analyst

Rod Hall — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Ross Seymore — Deutsche Bank — Analyst

Joseph Moore — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Chris Caso — Raymond James — Analyst

Blayne Curtis — Barclays — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Qualcomm Second Quarter Fiscal 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded April 27, 2022. The playback number for today’s call is 877-660-6853. International callers please dial 201-612-7415. The playback reservation number is 13728288.

I would now like to turn the call over to Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan, Vice President of Investor Relations, Mr. Lopez-Hodoyan, please go ahead.

Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan — Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you, and good afternoon everyone. Today’s call will include prepared remarks by Cristiano Amon and Akash Palkhiwala. In addition, Alex Rogers will join the question-and-answer session.

You can access our earnings release and a slide presentation that accompany this call on our Investor Relations website. In addition, this call is being webcast on qualcomm.com, and a replay will be available on our website later today.

During the call today, we will use non-GAAP financial measures as defined in Regulation G, and you can find the related reconciliations to GAAP on our website. We will also make forward-looking statements, including projections and estimates of future events, business or industry trends or business or financial results.

Actual events or results could differ materially from those projected in our forward-looking statements. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our most recent 10-K, which contain important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements.

And now to comments from Qualcomm’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Cristiano Amon.

Cristiano R. Amon — President & Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Mauricio, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. As we shared at our Investor Day last November, Qualcomm is at the intersection of transformative trends that are generating demand for our broad technology portfolio across virtually every industry. This is creating strong growth and diversification opportunities beyond handsets.

These trends, which include the enterprise transformation of the home, convergence of mobile and PC, merging of physical and digital spaces, the digital transformation of industries, connectivity and processing at the edge, the automotive digital chassis and 5G have only continued to accelerate. They are driving our financial outperformance in a greater than 7 times addressable market expansion to approximately $700 billion in the next decade.

As you can see from our results, we delivered record revenues of $11.2 billion and non-GAAP earnings of $3.21 per share, representing year-over-year growth of 41% and 60% respectively, both exceeding the high-end of our guidance. In QCT, our chipset business and the growth engine of the company, we saw strength across the entire portfolio. Revenues of $9.5 billion were also a record and reflect our continued diversification.

Our Automotive design win pipeline is now over $16 billion, up more than $3 billion since fiscal Q1. IoT revenues grew 61% year-over-year with strong growth across all 3 categories of consumer, edge networking and industrial. RF front-end revenues revenues grew 28% year-over-year and handset revenues grew 56% year-over-year. These results demonstrate that our growth drivers remain unchanged and our strategy is working.

Our one technology roadmap across wireless connectivity, advanced edge processing and power-efficient AI is incomparable across our peer group. In fact, advanced processing and artificial intelligence are the fastest-growing silicon content areas for Qualcomm. As such, we can no longer be defined just as a communications company serving one industry. Rather, Qualcomm is a leading-connected processor company for the intelligent edge serving multiple new end markets and enabling the growth of the cloud connected economy.

As we continue to expand, we remain on-track to meet our Investor Day financial projections, and I will now provide an update on our progress to-date. In Automotive, our horizontal platform the Snapdragon Digital Chassis is a significant driver of our growing design win pipeline and is increasingly becoming a key asset for automakers. Our Digital Chassis comprises a full suite of open, flexible and scalable platforms for telematics, connectivity, digital cockpit, ADAS and autonomy and Cloud services. With leading system solutions expertise and capabilities across multiple domains, Qualcomm is fast becoming the preferred industry partner for the auto industry and is well-positioned for continued growth.

Since our last earnings call, we significantly expanded our Snapdragon Digital Chassis capabilities. First, the Arriver acquisition enhance our ability to deliver open, fully integrated and competitive ADAS solutions to automakers and Tier 1 suppliers at scale. As a result of the acquisition, we are incorporating Arriver’s computer vision, drive policy and driver assistance assets into Snapdragon Ride.

Second, we recently announced a long-term cooperation with BMW to jointly develop and extend BMW Automated Drive software to the Snapdragon Ride platform. A co-developed solution is scalable and customizable and can be offered by Qualcomm to other automotive OEMs across all tiers. We are also pleased with our multi-year technology collaboration with Stellantis, which will be utilizing our Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Platforms across the automakers 14 brands. Upcoming Stellantis vehicles will also be featuring 5G capabilities for telematics systems based on our Snapdragon Auto 5G Modem RF platforms.

In consumer IoT, Android tablets are becoming collaboration tools and increasingly demand is shifting from entry-level commodity tablets to premium connected computing devices, a clear validation of the convergence of mobile and PC. We are pleased that Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is powering the newest flagship tablets, such as the Galaxy Tab S8 Series globally. Additionally, we are growing in premium and high-tier devices with OEMs such as Lenovo, HP and OPPO.

We’re also pleased to see the announcement of the first-ever premium Windows on ARM enterprise focus laptop, the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s powered by the new Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 Compute platform. This new ThinkPad features 5G mmWave, AI accelerated experiences, advanced camera and audio technology and ultra-slim fan-less design and up to 28 hours of battery life on a single charge. We are encouraged by the broad interest in our upcoming products utilizing our industry-leading CPUs design by our NUVIA new team. We continue to drive the inevitable transition to ARM-based computing while redefining the future of mobile productivity.

In edge networking, we continue to benefit from the demand for global connectivity required for remote work, school and play and we provide industry-leading solutions enabling the migration to Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E mesh technologies. We also recently announced awards first and fastest Wi-Fi 7 Commercial Solution, which we believe will further extend our leadership position. With multi-gigabit WiFi-performance ultra-low latency and unmatched spectrum versatility, we believe our Wi-Fi 7 solutions will unlock a new era of advanced consumer and industrial applications.

Our 5G fixed wireless access solutions also continue to gain traction as a last mile broadband solution. We now have more than 125 fixed wireless access designs announced or in development by more than 40 OEMs. We also introduced next-generation features such as standalone 5G mmWave support in our RF sensing suite to enable operators to extend their 5G service offerings to the home and enterprise.

Industrial IoT experienced the fastest year-over-year revenue growth within IoT this quarter, driven by continued demand for both connectivity and advanced processing at the edge. Notably, this quarter, we saw accelerated demand for ruggedized handheld devices for warehousing, logistics and healthcare industries as well as for robotics platforms. Going forward, we are actively building an ecosystem of system integrators and channel partners to support the scale of our industrial IoT platforms as they become critical for the digital transformation of multiple verticals.

In handsets, we had record revenues of $6.3 billion, driven by continued traction with leading smartphone OEMs such as Samsung, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo and Honor where Snapdragon continues to be the mobile technology platform-of-choice for premium and high-tier Android. We now have approximately 75% of the premium tier processor volume for Samsung’s Galaxy S22 smartphones, up from approximately 40% in the Galaxy S21. Samsung’s strategy to adopt Qualcomm for the majority of volume is significant and validates our platform leadership as well as consumer preference for the Snapdragon brand.

Our Snapdragon mobile solutions continue to define premium smartphone experiences. Let me highlight a few examples from our Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. In Imaging, devices enabled by this platform achieved the highest DXOMARK ever, making it the best smartphone camera in the world. In connectivity, our solution features the world’s first 5G AI processor in the modem RF system enabling AI-based performance enhancements, antenna tuning, network selection and more. In AI, our 7 generation AI engine doubles the computational performance versus the previous generation.

Our handset strategy, as outlined at Investor Day, is enabling share gains in enhancing our ability to capture the most significant portion of the revenue opportunity. In RF front-end, we continue to drive 5G modem RF leadership. Our 5th Generation Modem RF system now implements advanced features such as AI integration, mmWave and sub-6 dual connectivity and 5G sub-6 care aggregation with FDD and TDD spectrum. Looking forward, in addition to growth in handsets, we’re expanding RF front-end into Automotive and IoT.

In our licensing business, revenues of $1.6 billion were above the midpoint of our guidance driven by the most valuable patent portfolio in the industry, and we continue to develop and patent new essential innovations for future releases of 5G and beyond. Lastly, demand remains strong across all our technologies and continue to exceed supply. We believe our multi-sourcing and capacity expansion initiatives will continue to provide incremental improvements to our supply throughout the year.

With our one technology roadmap and demand for our products and solutions across virtually all industries, we are in an incredible position to continue providing high-performance, low power computing on-device intelligence and everything wireless. Our plan remains on-track, and I’m very excited for the future of Qualcomm.

I would now like to turn the call over to Akash.

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Cristiano, and good afternoon, everyone. We are extremely pleased to report strong second quarter results. We delivered non-GAAP revenues of $11.2 billion, our third consecutive quarter of record revenues and non-GAAP EPS of $3.21. These results reflect year-over-year increases of 41% and 69% respectively, driven by strength across all QCT revenue streams.

QTL revenues of $1.6 billion and EBT margin of 73% were above the midpoint of guidance reflecting a slight decrease in lower tier units offset by a favorable mix. This was another record quarter for QCT with revenues of $9.5 billion and EBT of $3.3 billion, an increase of 52% and 111% respectively versus the year ago quarter. We have now doubled QCT EBT dollars on a year-over-year basis in 6 of the last 7 quarters. Additionally, QCT EBT margin of 35% surpassed the high-end of our guidance and increased 10 points year-over-year driven by revenue growth and diversification.

Handset revenues of $6.3 billion increased 56% versus a year ago quarter. The upside relative to guidance was driven by increased volume in premium tier and improved supply. We gained share in Samsung’s flagship device, the Galaxy S22 demonstrating leadership of our Snapdragon processor technology and our ability to compete with internal chipset initiatives.

RF front-end revenues of $1.2 billion, grew 28% versus the year ago quarter on increased adoption of our products across major OEMs. We saw accelerated growth across IoT and Automotive as we aligned supply to better meet the demand for our products. IoT revenues were up 61% year-over-year to $1.7 billion, primarily on increased demand for our chipsets for connected intelligent edge devices. We saw strong performance across consumer edge networking and industrial with each of these categories growing by more than 50% compared to the year ago quarter.

We achieved record Automotive revenues of $339 million, a growth of 41% versus the year ago period, driven by launches with our Digital Cockpit platforms. With the strong adoption of our Snapdragon Digital Chassis, we have now increased our overall design win pipeline to greater than $16 billion.

Lastly, during the quarter, we announced a 10% increase in our dividends and returned $1.7 billion in dividends and stock repurchases. Our strong free cash flow has positioned us to deliver attractive capital returns that are among the highest in the semiconductor industry, while maintaining flexibility for strategic investments.

Before turning to guidance, I will provide an update on the Arriver acquisition. On April 1, SSW Partners acquired Veoneer for $4.6 billion with substantially all of it funded by Qualcomm. SSW Partners then transferred Arriver to Qualcomm and now plans to sell the remaining non-Arriver businesses over the next several quarters. We expect that Qualcomm will receive most of the cash proceeds from the sale. We estimate Arriver non-GAAP operating expenses of approximately $50 million per quarter. However, our guidance for the third fiscal quarter does not include this impact since we plan to report Arriver one quarter in arrears until the fourth quarter. Further details of the transaction are included in our 10-Q and earnings presentation posted on our Investor Relations website.

Turning to financial guidance for the third fiscal quarter. We are forecasting revenues of $10.5 billion to $11.3 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $2.75 to $2.95. We estimate QTL revenues of $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion and EBT margins of 69% to 73%. Our guidance contemplates global handset units consistent with the exit rate from the second fiscal quarter and assumes the end of COVID-related impact in China by the end of the quarter.

In QCT, we estimate revenues of $9.1 billion to $9.6 billion and EBT margins are 31% to 33%. At the midpoint, this implies year-over-year revenue growth of 44% and EBIT dollar growth of $1.2 billion. On a sequential basis, we expect mid-single digit revenue growth in IoT and Automotive and a seasonal reduction in handsets and RF front-end. Our strong forecast for QCT is driven by the same factors which benefited our second quarter, including gains in handset premium tier volume, strong demand in IoT and Automotive and supply improvements. We anticipate non-GAAP operating expenses to be up 5% to 7% sequentially reflecting select investments in product roadmap.

In closing, we are pleased with our financial results and strong execution as we manage to supply constraints and the current macroeconomic environment. Our QCT handset revenues are on-track to grow by greater than 50% in fiscal ’22 and we are well-positioned for fiscal ’23 as we continue to benefit from increased processor content and share gains. While we strengthen our mobile leadership, diversification is the top priority for the company as evidenced by increasing design win pipeline in Automotive and the accelerating revenue growth in IoT.

Thank you. Back to you, Mauricio.

Mauricio Lopez-Hodoyan — Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you, Akash. Operator, we’re now ready for questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Matt Ramsay with Cowen. Please proceed.

Matthew D. Ramsay — Cowen and Company — Analyst

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. Congrats guys on the strong results. Cristiano, my first question comes on the Automotive business, obviously there’s a lot going on with the Arriver acquisition, the Stellantis deal and you guys talking about a $16 billion pipeline now. I wonder if we could go back and revisit some assumptions from the Analyst Day, I think you guys had talked about getting to $3.5 billion in revenue on sort of a 5-year basis. You’re running maybe a third of that now, but the pipeline is expanded dramatically. So maybe you could talk a little bit about the visibility on revenue and how you’re thinking about the numbers that you laid out at the Analyst Day for that strong Automotive growth? Thanks.

Cristiano R. Amon — President & Chief Executive Officer

Thanks for your question Matt. Look, I think the simple answer to your question is looking really good. The way you should think about that as the cars are really becoming connected computer on wheels, the Digital Chassis assets of Qualcomm is really resonating with carmakers and and we’re probably winning ahead even of our original projections. So we feel pretty good about our ability to meet what we outlined in Analyst Day.

Matthew D. Ramsay — Cowen and Company — Analyst

Thank you for that. And as a follow-up just on the handset business, I think it’s notable the significant, I guess share expansion that you guys are highlighting at Samsung. And if you go back to the Analyst Day, I think you talked about growing QCT handset revenue sort of in that 12% range either, even while Cupertino came out of share in the 2023 phone in a pretty significant way. So I guess there were some questions at that time about the ability to grow through the next 2 or 3 years Android revenue in such a significant way. So Cristiano are you thinking about the content and share expansion at Samsung as being sustainable, and how is the RF attach on that expansion in share at Samsung trending? Thank you.

Cristiano R. Amon — President & Chief Executive Officer

Great question, Matt. Look, I wanted to pointed out, it’s a pretty good trade actually instead of providing a modem we will provide an entire Snapdragon platform with AI, GPUs, CPUs and a lot of silicon content plus RF front-end. It’s a pretty positive trade, if I can say that way. This has been consistent with what we said before, you probably saw that in the making It’s a lot of the new form factor from Samsung both the Fold and the Flip was Qualcomm globally, and I think the GS22 kind of outlined the strategy to offer a deeper partnership with Qualcomm. And going forward, we expect our relationship with Samsung only to increase. So we’re very pleased, and I think it reflects that the strategy is working. We’ve been focused on premium and high, and that’s the value share of the Android market and technology investments are differentiation and even Snapdragon brand matters. And I think that’s reflected in what happened with GS22.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Mike Walkley with Canaccord Genuity. Please proceed with your question.

Mike Walkley — Canaccord Genuity — Analyst

Great. Thanks. Cristiano, building on Matt’s question just on the smartphone market, there is some investor concern or just industry concern about slowing 5G or Android demand, but it sounds like you are still trying to meet demand with your ability to supply. Can you talk about kind of your design wins into the back half of the year and how you feel about the supply-demand environment for premium tier Android?

Cristiano R. Amon — President & Chief Executive Officer

Thanks for the question, Mike. There’s a lot in there. I think both how we think about the design as well as supply. So in handsets, it is a good story. I think Akash outlined, we’re growing year-over-year for fiscal ’22 in order of 50%, we grew 56% in the quarter and it’s a story of share gains with Samsung as well as if you look at fiscal ’22 compared to fiscal ’21 share gains in China as well, and we continue to see Snapdragon as probably the synonymous with premium and high Android flagship, the design pipeline is very strong. We’ve been reporting that as we talk about the number of designs and I’ll let Akash to talk about the market even though the market, it is a little bit more soft, we’re not that exposed to lower tier units because of our strategy to be really focused on premium and high and in the value share of the market. Maybe Akash, if you can comment.

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, Mike. From a market perspective, we saw some softness relative to our previous expectations in the March quarter in the lower-tier units, but as Cristiano said a lot of the driver for our revenue growth and our value proposition is very strong at the premium high tier and you’re seeing the benefit of that show up.

Cristiano R. Amon — President & Chief Executive Officer

So the second question, Mike, on supply. The supply situation, it’s going as we planned. I think contemplated in our guidance, contemplated into our projections that we made back in Analyst Day, coming to that then you’re going to hear the same thing that you probably be hearing from us consistently, we still have more demand than supply across all business.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Samik Chatterjee with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Samik Chatterjee — J.P. Morgan — Analyst

Hi, thanks for taking my question, and congratulations on a great quarter here. I just, I guess I wanted to start with Cristiano and Akash you both mentioned the 50% QCT handset growth for the year. If you can put that in context, we all know the overall markets either flat or down for handsets this year. I was Just wondering if you can quantify how much of that 50% growth is share versus content growth on an apples-to-apples basis. I’m just trying to think about how you would try to sort of capture what, how much of that growth is sustainable into next year? And I have a follow-up. Thank you.

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Samik, it’s Akash. So maybe I’ll address the question at a higher level in terms of the key drivers there. So first is, we talked about Samsung share increase, and so that has helped us at the premium tier. Second is that supply has improved, we’ve been able to meet more of the demand in China as well. So that’s the second key driver. As we’ve said in the past as the OEM mix has changed, it has opened up a larger portion of the market for us, and so being able to access that portion of the market is also beneficial. And then finally, the thing to remember is only 20% of the global handset units come from China, right? So the rest of the market, you’re still seeing strong demand at premium high tier end, so we’ve been able to participate in that. And then finally from a content perspective, as you know well, when you look at one generation to the next of phone, the amount of computing that consumers are demanding keeps going up, and that provides an opportunity for us, not just from a competitive differentiation perspective, but also additional content per phone. And so even if you look at one generation 5G phone to next generation 5G phone, because of the increase in content on the processor side, you’re seeing the benefits show up in our numbers.

Samik Chatterjee — J.P. Morgan — Analyst

And my follow-up Akash, maybe how are you thinking or sort of baking in the impact of the China lockdowns here both in relation to demand, and any impact on supply that we should think of?

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. So we’ve looked at it both from a demand and supply perspective. On the demand side, as I mentioned earlier, relative to our expectations we saw some slight decrease in lower tier units in China. So we are projecting that forward into the June quarter and our numbers assume a recovery in COVID-related impact in China by the end of the quarter. But obviously that’s a evolving situation and we’re going to continue to closely monitor it. But as I said earlier, China is 20% of the global market, you still have the remaining 80% where we’re seeing a lot of positive trends from a consumption perspective with a strong demand for premium high tier devices.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Stacy Rasgon with Bernstein Research. Please proceed with your question.

Stacy Rasgon — Bernstein Research — Analyst

Hi guys, thanks for taking my questions. I guess first, in this environment with China and COVID nevertheless, we’ve been hearing some players in the market talk about conservatism in their outlook. And I mean, this doesn’t feel conservatism, but maybe that’s wrong, I guess, the prior quarters feel that the original outlook look really strong and you’ve been crushing it. So I guess can you just give us some feeling for the degree of conviction you have in this outlook. And I know you’ve given us a little bit, not just into June, you gave us a little bit on some of the end markets into September as well. It sounds like the drivers are there, but can you just maybe give us a little more color on where your conviction levels are as we’re sitting here today?

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Sure Stacy, it’s Akash. We obviously take a consistent approach when we guide the quarters going forward. So we’ve taken the same approach as we have done in the past. Certainly, there is more things that we don’t, given the situation in China and then macroeconomic situation as well, but the demand signals are strong and supply is improving and a lot of the upside that you’re seeing is those 2 factors coming together.

Stacy Rasgon — Bernstein Research — Analyst

Got it. For my follow-up, you gave us some color on handsets, have handsets dropped just 50% blanket in the second half that would put them as you said down a little bit in June, and you’d probably be up 20% in September sequentially, if you just applied 50% year-over-year. So maybe a little color on that into September. Is there any outlook you can give us either qualitative or quantitative for the rest of the business into September?

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, from September quarter perspective, as you know well, it’s kind of the quarter where we start seeing the inflection, second inflection point of the year for us where we have launches, flagship launches late in the August-September timeframe going into holiday season. So we still expect that to happen and that’s going to help our performance as we go into those 2 quarters. Also, if you look at the September quarter, we still, we are seeing strong demand across our diversification plan. So that’s playing out as or better than we had expected. And so IoT, Automotive and RF front-end, we also expect strong year-over-year growth in those areas into the September quarter.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Tal Liani with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Tal Liani — Bank of America — Analyst

Hi guys. I have 2 questions, one is on margins. Last quarter was record margin, this quarter again, much better than expected. Can you discuss the puts and takes of margins and what we should expect going forward? That’s number one. And number two, just want to understand, just going to follow-up on China, entering the quarter we saw China is going to be weak, we are also hearing and I want you to correct me if I’m wrong, that Huawei share loss in China is not materializing, meaning Huawei is still selling in the high end and I’m many miles away from China, so I would like to know what are the kind of share dynamics in China and what is the overall demand, and if you can just elaborate a bit on the Chinese market? Thanks.

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Sure, Tal. It’s Akash. So on the operating margin side, we’re obviously very pleased with our margin performance. We guided 32% to 34% and came in at 35%, pretty strong performance. We are guiding 31% to 33% going forward as well. And it’s really a combination of the three drivers we’ve discussed before. Revenue forecast with diversification, that’s really helping us. Gross margins, as I’m sure you will see through the numbers, we’re doing well there. And then being able to leverage the handset technology into these new markets also make it accretive to diversify. So it’s the combination of those things. Then, consistent with what we’ve said before, the story is playing out as we would have expected. From a China perspective, you should think of, we are participating in the revenue opportunity across all OEMs in China, and so if there is a particular OEM that’s winning, Qualcomm would be participating in that as well.

Cristiano R. Amon — President & Chief Executive Officer

So Tal, this is Cristiano, I just want to add a couple of things. So first of all, this strategy that from handsets for us, it’s different. We’re really focused on premium and high tier. We have been very disciplined how we think about pricing and we’re really building on our technology differentiation, preference for Snapdragon brand and I think that has had a contribution on the gross margin to handset business. But also we pointed out that in China as represented 20% of the market, the premium tier devices, whether it’s Vivo, OPPO, Xiaomi, Honor, Huawei for 4G as well as devices of Samsung, they are all powered by Qualcomm. And that is why we’ve been benefiting of growth in a richer mix of premium and high. We’re not that much impacted by the low tier units and we’ve been less interested in commodity units in the handset business. Having said that, regardless of what’s happened to China market, I think the story on IoT is strong, the story on Auto is strong and all of the new business are accretive to margins as Akash outlined. Thank you.

Tal Liani — Bank of America — Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Rod Hall with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Rod Hall — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Yeah, hi guys. Thanks for the question. I wanted to come back to the 50% growth in handsets. When we calculate what that implies for Q4. It’s about $1 billion more than we had anticipated for QCT revenues. And I think we were above Street. So, a very strong number there. I guess, I want to try to ask the visibility question again, maybe in a different way, which is, do you — how much of that revenue is committed, and I’m assuming this would be mainly high end Android buyers that would be interested in shipping new units at the end of the year, given your prior commentary about Apple exposure and so on. But I wonder if you could just confirm that is Android, and then talk a little bit about how much of that revenue is in the bag now and how much still needs to be kind of developed in the order book? And then I have a follow-up.

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Rod. The driver of the September quarter is typically consistent with what you would have seen in the past, right? So flagship launches that happened, not just in Android but Apple as well, we see the benefit of that show up in our numbers in that quarter and then going into December quarter. So that’s a factor. Android demand continues to be strong. We have obviously significant demand and visibility in terms of the information we’re getting from all of our customers, even with reconciling their demand signal for the market changes. So we’re pretty confident as we look forward.

Rod Hall — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Okay, great. And then for my follow-up, I just wanted to, you haven’t touched on Europe at all, you talked about a little bit of weakness in China, we picked up some developing weakness in Europe. But I’m just curious what you’re seeing there from a demand point of view, it doesn’t sound like anything, but maybe give us a little bit of color on what you see going on in the European market from a demand perspective?

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I think maybe the only really thing to highlight that’s inconsistent with the way we had seen the market before and the way we had outlined at Investor Day is the weakness at the lower tier, when you’re going to step step back from that and look at the rest of the market. On a global basis, it’s playing out consistent with our expectations.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Ross Seymore with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Ross Seymore — Deutsche Bank — Analyst

Hi guys, thanks for letting me ask a couple of questions, and congrats on the strong results, I wanted to get back to the handset growth and the sustainability of it. The 50% number in this fiscal year is great, significantly above my estimates just like what Rod just said about his. But as you think about the moving parts that drove that, how much of, say the $10 billion SAM opportunity you talked about in China will already have been addressed? And if you’ve gone from 40% to 75% penetration in the Samsung GS22, how much more is there? So really what I’m getting at is, how long can you outgrow the handset market by content and market share gains if you’re doing so well now?

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, Ross, it’s Akash. So when we look forward on the handset side, we still think that there is opportunity to gain share, especially as supply improves. So that’d be one driver. Second is, 4G to 5G transition. We have some ways to go on that for the rest of the market. So we should see that play out, and that should benefit us as well. The third driver is what we discussed earlier, where the amount of processing that’s needed, and this is, whether it’s CPU or GPU, AI, camera, audio, video security, each of these vectors are being pushed hard in terms of performance and the competitive landscape between the OEMs is demanding that all these capabilities get added to the handset. So that is also helping us from a content increase perspective. And then those are the drivers as we look forward.

Ross Seymore — Deutsche Bank — Analyst

Thanks for the color on that, Akash. I guess the follow-up would be on the margin side of things. You guys have done a great job expanding both the gross and the operating margins, especially in the QCT side of things. I’m a little curious in the near term with your guidance, the overt guidance on EBT is down a couple of points, both in QCT and QTL, but more precisely, it looks like you’re guiding the gross margin down a little bit in QCT. Given the moving parts within that, is there something unique going on, because I would have thought kind of the diversifying engines would have actually brought the margins up, but it seems like the gross margins going down 1.5 point, 2 point something like that?

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. So I think in the quarter that we just reported, we had guided gross margin at a certain level and we came in even stronger than that. And so, as we look forward, we are guiding kind of in line with our recent history, more in line with the way we had guided the March quarter as well. So we could have a potential opportunity based on mix of products, but the insight that we have right now based on the mix, we think that’s a good number.

Ross Seymore — Deutsche Bank — Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Joe Moore with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Joseph Moore — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Great. Thank you. Obviously, you’ve seen this really healthy environment in the premium tier handset market, but you’ve also had a shortage, and I wonder has the shortage contributed to the pricing and margin strength that you’ve seen in any way, as that shortage eases, do you see a more competitive market. And you talked about as your supply gets better, you can take share, does that imply they’re more price aggressive or are these prices going to be sticky and mix shift is the element to watch?

Cristiano R. Amon — President & Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks for the question, Joe. This is Cristiano. I think what you have to watch is the amount of processing content that is increasing. Its now beyond 5G story. Just on the premium tier for the next-generations of Snapdragon coming up, it’s a significant increase in GPU, in artificial intelligence, in CPU. So content on the processor side has been the biggest driver of higher ASPs and gross margin in handsets. The other thing I want to continue to point it out, which is, as we leverage our one technology roadmap to grow into other business, and in the quarter, 61% growth from IoT, Automotive, we added $3 billion of the design win pipeline, that’s all accretive to margin, highly leverage from the R&D that we do in mobile.

Joseph Moore — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Great, thank you. And if I could follow up on the royalty side, nice to see that those numbers are solid in the first half of the year. Can you help us put that in the context of the overall supply chain issues that your customers are dealing with, and does that imply if they have pent-up demand because that end up being better than seasonal royalty strength and just how should we correlate that with what we’re seeing on the supply side?

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so the easiest way to think about the royalty business is really aligning into the total handset market and then mix within that. So as you would recall, at Investor Day we had forecasted 2022 calendar units as flat to calendar 2021, and what we’re seeing play-out is slightly lower units at the low tier, but offset by a stronger mix, and that’s the combination of factors that’s impacting both the actuals for QTL and our guidance for the next quarter.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Chris Caso with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Chris Caso — Raymond James — Analyst

Thank you. Good evening. I just want to go back to the Samsung commentary and the share gains that you’ve had there. And, of course, at Samsung your competition is an internal competition there. Can you speak to your level of conviction that now that you’ve achieved this new level of share within the Samsung Galaxy Series, that it’s sustainable, what allows you to keep this business as you go forward with Samsung?

Cristiano R. Amon — President & Chief Executive Officer

Condition is very high, and I’ll point you to something that I would encourage, I think, you all to observe at what’s happening in the market. In many of those markets that are now new markets to Qualcomm, Samsung is actively advertising Snapdragon as an ingredient brand towards the Galaxy S22. And I think that’s a very significant data point. And as I said earlier, I think we’re very confident that Samsung relationship is going to continue to be an expanding relationship for us.

Chris Caso — Raymond James — Analyst

Great. Thank you. And as a follow-up, I wanted to revisit the notebook market and your intentions on penetrating back with Qualcomm silicon. It’s something you spoke about quite a bit at the Analyst Day. Could you give us an update on that, and perhaps when would we be able to hear more on that and start to see some impact on that into the results?

Cristiano R. Amon — President & Chief Executive Officer

Absolutely. Thanks for the question. We are on-track. We have been working with Microsoft now for many years, I think Windows 11, as I mentioned before is for the first time you have full support, including 64-bit emulation on ARM, is the first time that you actually have a platform, which is, it’s ready for commercial and enterprise deployment. We did within the quarter launched with Lenovo the first enterprise ThinkPad and we have a number of designs with our 8cx Generation 3. As we think about the next generation, we have been developing our own CPU that’s been designed by the NUVIA team and we are going after the performance tier for focus about high scale in the enterprise and development is on-track, and we expect it to have that in late 2023.

Operator

Our next question will come from the line of Blayne Curtis with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Blayne Curtis — Barclays — Analyst

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I want to ask you, if you look at the first half of the year, I think the 50% growth in handsets, it’s pretty much all higher revenue per chipset for your filings. So I’m just kind of curious as you look at the second half, obviously the compares on some the content get harder, just how are you thinking about that mix between unit growth, which I think Android units probably went positive this quarter, but were down as you’re starting to supply. But how you think about the second half in terms of the kind of pull there to grow revenue units i.e., share or more content?

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Blayne, it’s Akash. So as I mentioned earlier, we are seeing growth in content, which is a driver for us. We are also seeing the share that we picked up at Samsung that we’ve discussed the strength in China and the improving supply, all of these are combinations that help us in the second half of the year. Also to keep in mind that typically the new Apple phone launch happens in the fall timeframe, and that would be a driver as well.

Blayne Curtis — Barclays — Analyst

Got you. And then maybe just to follow-up on IoT, just curious, the mix tailwinds you’re seeing there, I mean, assuming stuff like Wi-Fi 6E is helping, but any color on the tailwinds within the IoT segment?

Akash Palkhiwala — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. So as we reported, IoT grew, total revenue grew by 61% year-over-year. So, of course, very happy about that. When you kind of unpack it a bit and you look at enterprise, consumer and edge networking each of those portions of IoT grew by greater than 50% individually. So it’s not something that’s concentrated in an area. It’s very broad growth. As Cristiano mentioned in his prepared remarks as well that the strongest growth came from the enterprise channel, which was really good for us. I think that’s an area that the SAM is effectively unlimited. There is a lot of digital transformation that needs to happen, and our ability to expand our presence there and participate in it, is a tremendous driver for us long term.

Operator

Thank you. That concludes today’s question-and-answer session. Mr. Amon, do you have anything further to add before adjourning the call?

Cristiano R. Amon — President & Chief Executive Officer

Yes, thank you. Thanks everyone for joining us on the call today. I also like to take this opportunity to thank the hardworking, dedicated, brilliant Qualcomm employees. Thank all of our partners. And I just wanted to say, while we love all the questions about handsets, and handsets always going to be a very big part of our business, I wanted to point you all that the Qualcomm is changing from a communications company for the mobile industry into a really connected processor company for intelligent edge, even how we think about handsets is no longer about modems. And in the quarter, we’re super pleased that IoT alone was $1.7 billion. If you look at the IoT plus Auto combined plus our RF business, in excess of $3 billion and we’re just busy executing on one of the biggest opportunities in our history. Thank you very much.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]