Qualcomm has named Sergio Buniac to run its mobile business, putting a veteran of Motorola in charge of the division that supplies processors to the world’s largest phone makers. The appointment, announced on Wednesday, comes as Qualcomm’s smartphone chip business faces pressure from a weak handset market and from customers developing their own chips.
Buniac spent years at Motorola, where he led programs developing mobile chips and worked closely with Qualcomm as a partner, and he is known in the industry for his relationships with phone manufacturers. His appointment is widely read as an effort to rebuild the ties that have frayed between Qualcomm and some of its biggest customers. The company said Buniac would oversee the division that produces its Snapdragon processors, the chips that power most Android phones.
The context for the change is a smartphone industry in transition. Global phone shipments have been flat or declining for years, and the replacement cycles that once drove growth have lengthened as devices have become more capable and more expensive. Qualcomm’s mobile division remains its largest business, but its growth has slowed, and the company has been looking for new sources of revenue while protecting the base that pays its bills.
The competitive pressure is more specific. Several of Qualcomm’s largest customers have been developing their own processors, reducing their dependence on the company’s chips. Apple, the biggest buyer of premium mobile chips, has been moving its modems and processors in-house for years, and other manufacturers have followed with their own silicon programs. Each defection shrinks the market for Qualcomm’s products, and the company has responded by expanding into other areas, from automotive chips to AI processors for laptops and data centers.
The move also reflects the shifting center of gravity in the mobile business. Qualcomm has been investing heavily in its automotive division, which supplies chips for the digital cockpits and driver-assistance systems that have become selling points for carmakers, and in its AI business, which has been growing as the technology spreads into devices. Both areas have grown faster than the company’s traditional smartphone business, and Buniac’s mandate is to keep the mobile division stable while those newer businesses mature.
The choice of Buniac is notable for what it signals about Qualcomm’s priorities. The company could have promoted an engineer from its own ranks or recruited an executive from a competitor; instead it chose someone whose career was built in the phone business, at a company that was once one of the industry’s most influential. His experience at Motorola, which was acquired by Lenovo, gives him firsthand knowledge of how phone makers think about chips, pricing, and partnerships, knowledge that Qualcomm’s leadership believes will help it hold onto its customers.
The timing of the appointment matters. Qualcomm has been navigating a legal and licensing relationship with Apple that has been contentious for years, and it has been defending its licensing model in courtrooms and regulatory hearings around the world. The company’s ability to collect royalties on phone sales, a business that is more profitable than its chip sales, depends on maintaining good relationships with the manufacturers that sell the phones. Buniac’s job includes managing those relationships, and the company’s choice of an executive with deep roots in the manufacturing side of the business suggests it wants someone who can speak the customers’ language.
The smartphone market’s problems are not entirely Qualcomm’s fault. The industry is mature, the upgrade cycle is longer, and the innovations that once drove people to buy new phones, from cameras to folding screens, have become incremental. Qualcomm has been positioning its chips as the platform for on-device AI, arguing that the new generation of features will revive demand, and its newest processors include dedicated hardware for running AI models. Whether that bet restores growth to the mobile business is an open question, and the new leadership will be judged on it.
The company’s broader strategy is to be less dependent on any single market. Qualcomm has been diversifying into laptops, where its chips are now used in a growing number of Windows machines, and into cars, where its automotive revenue has grown into a substantial business. The mobile division is still the largest contributor, but its share of the company’s revenue has been shrinking, and the appointment of Buniac is part of a plan to keep that division competitive while the rest of the company grows.
Analysts who follow Qualcomm said the appointment is unlikely to change the fundamentals overnight. The chip market is cyclical, the competitive threats are structural, and no single executive can reverse the trend of customers building their own silicon. But the choice of Buniac, with his Motorola background and his relationships across the industry, signals that Qualcomm intends to fight for the business it has. The company’s future depends on holding its position in phones while it builds the businesses that will replace them, and Buniac’s mandate is to hold the line.
