Qualcomm no longer has to worry about Arm threatening to terminate its licensing agreement for Arm’s technology, paving the way for the CPU tech at the heart of the years-long spat to proceed unimpeded in IoT, automotive, and other products.
That became clear during Qualcomm’s fiscal first quarter 2025 earnings call on Feb. 5, when Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told listeners that Arm “recently notified us that it was withdrawing its October 22, 2024 notice of breach and indicated that it has no current plan to terminate the Qualcomm architecture license agreement.”
That statement followed a mistrial ruling in December, though it was not clear in the immediate aftermath of the ruling what the next move would be by either company.
Amon also said during the earnings call, “The jury's verdict vindicated Qualcomm's CPU innovations and affirmed Qualcomm's contract with Arm provides a license for Qualcomm's products containing our proprietary Oryon CPUs in industries such as smartphones, automotive, next-generation PCs, IoT and data center.”
Arm happened to hold its own fiscal third quarter 2025 earnings call on the same day as Qualcomm’s fiscal Q1 ‘25 call. During the call, Arm executives did not directly acknowledge that it had rescinded its threat to cancel Qualcomm’s licensing agreement.
But, answering an analyst question about how the result of the trial would affect Arm’s royalty revenue, Arm CFO Jason Child said, “There's no impact. We had forecasted really all the way back at IPO and continue to forecast as though we were not going to prevail in that lawsuit. The primary reason for the lawsuit very much was around defending our IP, and that's important. But from a financial perspective, we had assumed that we'll continue to be receiving royalties that -- basically the same rates that they've been paying for in the past and will continue to pay.”
Arm royalty revenue looks to be healthy regardless. For fiscal Q3 ‘25, the company reported overall revenue of $983 million, closing in on $1 billion in revenue for the first time, a mark the company expects to surpass when the current quarter is tallied up. The Q3 take included a record $580 million in royalty revenue, a 23% year-over-year jump. “This is being primarily driven by the continued adoption of Armv9, the ramp-up of chips based on Arm Compute Subsystems (CSS), IoT improvement, and increased usage of Arm-based chips in data centers,” the company stated.
Qualcomm, for its part, also turned in a record revenue quarter, with $11.7 billion overall. As the company continues to progress with its diversification strategy, fiscal Q1 showed Automotive revenues growing by 61% year over year to $961 million, and IoT revenue increasing 36% year over year to $1.5 billion.
Qualcomm CFO and COO Akash Palkhiwala also said that for the current quarter, “We expect IoT and automotive revenues to grow by approximately 15% and 50%, respectively, versus the year-ago period, driven by the strong product momentum…”