New York, Feb 10, 2026, 13:50 EST — Regular session
- After a choppy week, Qualcomm shares picked up roughly 0.5% in afternoon trading.
- Morgan Stanley is back on coverage, assigning an underweight rating and putting the target at $132.
- A Qualcomm executive disclosed a stock sale in a Form 4, executed through a pre-set 10b5-1 trading plan.
QUALCOMM Incorporated edged up 0.5% to $139.61 on Tuesday, clawing back a bit following a run of sharp volatility driven by concerns over smartphone demand and supply of components.
The stock held its ground, despite Morgan Stanley’s move to resume coverage at “underweight” and slap a $132 price target on it. The firm argued that “earnings power is already optimized” and flagged a possible memory shortage, which could spell “a tough Android environment” before the year’s out. Morgan Stanley added that handset volumes are likely to be squeezed by tight memory supply, and called out Apple share loss plus the limited scale of the auto segment as investors hunt for growth offsets. Investing.com
The warning comes just days after Qualcomm flagged that its latest quarterly revenue and earnings would fall short of Wall Street’s expectations, citing a global memory chip shortage that’s hampering handset manufacturing. That squeeze, the company said, continues to drag on smartphone demand—especially in China.
Other chip players tied to smartphones, like Arm, are feeling the squeeze too. With memory suppliers shifting focus to data centers, Android handset production is facing real pressure. How long can builds stay on schedule? Not clear. Reuters says this shortage might drag on through 2027.
A family trust connected to Heather S. Ace, Qualcomm’s executive vice president and chief human resources officer, unloaded 3,200 shares at $137 apiece, according to a Monday filing. The sale, disclosed in a Form 4, went through under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, which lets insiders set up sales ahead of time.
Traders are watching to see if memory supplies rebound quickly enough to head off more production cuts in mid-range Android phones—or if rising component prices force handset makers to hold back orders even further.
Sentiment is the other wild card here. Since the company’s outlook hammered the stock, every analyst revision jolts the argument—are we just looking at an “oversold” blip, or is there deeper, “structural” trouble lurking in the handset segment?
Still, things can turn quickly. Should memory supply snap back sooner than forecast, Android builds might bounce into the spring. That would make the recent downgrade cycle seem overly pessimistic.
Eyes turn to Barcelona March 2–5, with investors hunting for any new hints out of the smartphone supply chain and handset manufacturers during Mobile World Congress.
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