Qualcomm reported revenue of $9.9 billion for the quarter ending in December, a 5 percent increase year-over-year. The company tallied $6.69 billion in sales of handset chips during the three-month period, up 16 percent over the prior year’s $5.7 billion, marking a turnaround after two years of declines. The quarter marked the beginning of shipments of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, designed for mobile generative AI, and its adoption by OEMs and manufacturers including Samsung for its new Galaxy S24 lineup. Qualcomm also announced it will continue selling 5G modem chips to Apple.

Qualcomm posted net income of $2.77 billion for its first fiscal quarter of 2024, which ended December 24, beating analysts’ estimates.

In addition to handset chips, automotive was another strong category, with revenue up 31 percent from a year earlier, “while IoT dived 32 percent during the same period,” notes The Wall Street Journal.

Under Cristiano Amon, who was named CEO in June 2021, “Qualcomm has been working to apply its chip technology to markets beyond smartphones, including PCs, cars and virtual reality headsets,” CNBC explains, adding that the company “is best known for making smartphone chips — both the modems that connect them to cellular networks, as well as the processors at the heart of high-end Android devices.”

“In handsets, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform is setting a new standard for on-device gen AI experiences for premium smartphones and powers all through flagship Android devices launched and launching this fiscal year,” Amon said on the earnings call. He also referenced the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, which has mobile AI capabilities but is not as powerful and does not support ray tracing like the 8.

The company is also going all-in on mobile processing for mixed reality having announced in September the AR1 Gen 1,  the first Snapdragon chip purpose built for XR in smart glasses — and the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 platform, supporting 4.3K per eye resolution at up to 90 frames per second in 12 or more concurrent cameras.

Amon said on the earnings call that Qualcomm is a “partner with Samsung and Google to provide leading XR experiences to Galaxy users.”

Both companies featured prominently in the Galaxy S24 announcement during the Galaxy Unpacked event, where Amon appeared onstage with Google SVP of Android Hiroshi Lockheimer to speak (in general terms) about a mixed reality headset that The Verge says could be a year away.

As announced by Amon in the earnings call and reported in PhoneArena, Qualcomm has set a multiyear extension of its agreement with Samsung, in addition to a two-year add-on that takes its 2019 modem chip deal with Apple through 2027. The Apple renewal reinforces the notion that despite the iPhone maker’s purchase of Intel’s modem division for $1 billion it is not ready to start manufacturing its own phone modem chips.