Qualcomm Inc. Wednesday posted a 46 percent rise in 1st quarter fiscal 2004 profits mainly boosted by demand for cellular phones and related products, company officials said.
San Diego-based Qualcomm posted a net profit of $352 million, or 43 cents per share, for the fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 28, compared with a year-earlier profit of $241 million, or 30 cents per share.
Revenue rose to $1.2 billion from $1.1 billion a year earlier, buoyed by a 47.5 percent increase in licensing and royalty fees for its CDMA or Code Division Multiple Access, which is a standard for wireless networking. Mostly used in the United States CDMA is spreading throughout Asia and elsewhere although it has low penetration in Europe where the so-called GSM standard is more common. It has been estimated that Qualcomm receives about 4 percent of the price of every CDMA phone sold.
For its Wireless Business Solutions, which includes truck-related businesses, the company reported shipping about 10,900 OmniTRACS units and related products in the first quarter of fiscal 2004, compared to approximately 10,100 in the fourth quarter and 10,600 in the year ago quarter. The cumulative total number of OmniTRACS and related product shipments is nearly 500,000 units worldwide.
