QCOM QUALCOMM Inc

By Asa Fitch 

Mobile-phone chip giant Qualcomm Inc. on Tuesday named Cristiano Amon to succeed Steve Mollenkopf as chief executive as it puts a period of legal struggles behind it and aims to capitalize on rising demand for superfast 5G phones.

As Qualcomm's president, Mr. Amon, 50, has been the public face of the company's efforts to become a central supplier in the shift to 5G, winning business with Apple Inc., building on its share of the Chinese handset market and moving into new areas like chips for autonomous cars. He is set to take over on June 30, the company said.

Mr. Amon succeeds Mr. Mollenkopf, 52, who was promoted from president to CEO in 2014 and led the company through several years of unprecedented challenges. They included a long-running legal struggle with Apple over Qualcomm's patent-licensing practices, an antitrust case brought by the Federal Trade Commission, repelling an activist investor, averting a hostile takeover and having a $44 billion acquisition scrapped amid U.S.-China political tensions.

Mr. Mollenkopf, who has been with Qualcomm for 26 years, is to remain an adviser to the company for a period after Mr. Amon succeeds him, the company said. In a statement, the departing CEO said it was the right time to make the change with questions about the company's business model behind it and large new opportunities before it.

Mark McLaughlin, Qualcomm's chairman, said Mr. Mollenkopf faced "more in his seven years as CEO than most leaders face in their entire careers," citing his guiding of the company through its challenges.

Mr. Amon has spent most of his career at Qualcomm, spread over two stints interrupted by a period during which he helped rescue a venture-capital-owned telecom company in his native Brazil. After rejoining Qualcomm in 2004, he rose up the ranks within the company's chip-making operation, and became president -- and, to many observers, the presumptive heir to the CEO -- in 2018.

The CEO switch comes against the backdrop of a rapid deployment of new 5G networks world-wide that has boosted Qualcomm's fortunes. The company is a leading supplier of communications chips for mobile phones, including Apple's latest offerings -- though the iPhone maker has signaled it was starting to do some of that work in-house.

Mr. Amon, in a statement announcing his appointment, signaled Qualcomm's focus in coming years. "In addition to driving the expansion of 5G into mainstream devices and beyond mobile, Qualcomm is set to play a key role in the digital transformation of numerous industries as our technologies become essential to connecting everything to the cloud," he said.

Qualcomm in November said sales in its most recent quarter jumped sharply to $8.3 billion, beating Wall Street forecasts and boosting a stock that climbed 73% last year.

Write to Asa Fitch at asa.fitch@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 05, 2021 08:52 ET (13:52 GMT)

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