Qualcomm is the semiconductor company behind the Snapdragon chips used in many smartphones and ranked among the largest by market capitalization.
Qualcomm was founded in 1985 by Irwin Jacobs and six other co-founders. The company develops wireless communications technologies, licenses intellectual property, and designs chips through its Qualcomm CDMA Technologies business. Snapdragon is its best-known family of mobile platforms and processors.
Qualcomm’s business is closely connected to cellular standards, including technologies used in 3G, 4G, and 5G networks. It earns money both from selling semiconductor products and from licensing patents. That combination differentiates Qualcomm from chip designers focused mainly on personal-computer processors or graphics accelerators.
Snapdragon is a brand, not the name of the public company. Qualcomm Incorporated is the listed corporation, and its shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker QCOM. Market-cap rankings value the whole company, including licensing operations and chip businesses.