That would make sense. You touch on an interesting point-- that the chips themselves might be somewhat of a loss-leader to just get them out the door, where the licenses *on those chips* are the real money maker. While that might make OP's original statement ("a long time ago... made more money") true, these days it is no longer true.

QTL in Q2 '13 had $1800mil EBT with 88% of revenue contributing to earnings. EIGHTY EIGHT PERCENT. Holy cow. QCT in that same year had $600mil EBT with 17%.

For comparison, QTL in Q2 '22 had $1540mil EBT with 74% of revenue contributing to earnings. QCT in that same year had $3340mil EBT with 35%.

I guess really you can only squeeze so much before the market gets annoyed. Given these numbers, I can't see how QCT would be a loss-leader. Why else would the margins on them be increasing, and margins on QTL be decreasing?

My point is, I believe things aren't as lawyer-y as before. The Qualcomm of today focuses a lot more on its QCT division. Licensing is still obviously there, and will always be an incredibly nice moat, but it's not the suffocating "shakedown" it might have been 10 years ago.

Yes, last I checked QTL's revenue was much lower yet profit higher than QCT.