According to a memo sent out to employees by the company’s CEO Cristiano Amon in October 2026, Qualcomm was planning to lay off workers globally after their yearly employee reviews with notices beginning in November.
In his memo, Amon indicated that the layoffs were geared towards promoting a better performance culture and handling situations in which Qualcomm had failed to live up to expectations. No numbers were provided for the number of employees affected in the memo, but Reuters could not quantify the layoffs.
The company happens to be among the largest smartphone chipmakers, and it has had a tough time due to poor consumer electronics performance as memory prices increase. For example, Qualcomm reported revenues of just $5.14 billion from handsets in September, a fall of 26 percent when compared to the previous year’s revenue of $5.25 billion. Its stock price has increased by just about 1.5 percent in 2026.
As reported by The Tribune, the initial wave has hit the Qualcomm facility in Bengaluru as early as Monday, November 9th and is likely to follow through in phases throughout the nation.
According to sources, this reorganization will impact approximately 7 percent of the company’s 52,000-member workforce, and considering that almost 20,000 employees work in India, approximately 1,000 or more positions may be affected. India is the world's second-largest engineering center for Qualcomm after the US; this includes facilities in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi-NCR, and Chennai.
There are reports of the layoffs affecting both veteran engineers as well as new hires, and there are complaints that the employees had not gotten any kind of performance feedback prior to this action.
The severance package is equal to three months’ pay, based on the length of tenure, with an additional month for employees who completed relieving procedures within three days. This information comes from anonymous sources and has not been officially confirmed by Qualcomm.
Although facing this situation, Qualcomm is making a change. In the company’s July earnings report, it made it clear that the revenue from Apple products would fall faster than expected, while at the same time highlighting that revenues from the data center and other non-phone segments will more than compensate for the loss by fiscal 2027. Amon highlighted in his memo that the skills required have changed.
Qualcomm has made layoffs before as well. For example, in 2018, Qualcomm started a program of downsizing as a part of the commitment to investors in saving $1 billion per year. In 2023, the company had plans to lay off more than 1,200 employees in California due to low demand in smartphone chips. The difference of the 2026 layoffs is that they are global and performance-driven.
