Unless you’re Apple , making money from hardware in the mobile market keeps getting harder and harder.

That’s the situation Qualcomm finds itself in. The San Diego-based mobile chipmaker is reportedly planning to cut more than 10% of its 30,000-employee workforce, according to a report on Monday in the Information. The Information expects Qualcomm will announce these cuts during its upcoming third quarter earnings report this Wednesday.

Profits in the smartphone market are getting harder to come by. Lower priced devices are proliferating in China and India, and the market for high-end smartphones is maturing — Apple alone has managed to capture 92% of profits in the smartphone market these days.

You’ll still find Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors in nearly every high-end Android phone out there, but Qualcomm is facing heated competition from scrappy Asian chipmakers like Taiwan-based MediaTek and China-based Spreadtrum.

Qualcomm is still ahead of these rivals with its cellular modem technology, but MediaTek is spending a lot of money to catch up. MediaTek’s senior vice president, Jeffrey Ju, told me at the company’s Hsinchu, Taiwan headquarters that it expects its modems will be competitive with Qualcomm’s in a year. In the past year, MediaTek has opened research-and-development offices in Bangalore, Finland and San Diego, where it’s a 15-minute walk from Qualcomm’s front door.

Qualcomm also experienced a major blow this year when one of its biggest customers — Samsung — chose its own internally-developed applications processor and modems for most versions of its latest flagship phones, the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge.

In Qualcomm’s second quarter earnings report in April, the company lowered its lowered its revenue guidance for 2015 to the range of $25 billion to $27 billion versus a previous outlook of $26.3 billion to $28.0 billion. Qualcomm expects to make 10% to 20% less revenue in the third quarter compared to the same quarter last year.

Qualcomm has also been facing activist investor pressure from hedge fund Jana Partners, which is calling for Qualcomm to split up its chip business from its highly profitable licensing business. Jana’s argument is that splitting the two would help the company better realize the value in its chip business. Qualcomm is planning a strategic review to seriously consider splitting the company into two separate entities, according to a Wall Street Journal article on Monday.

A Qualcomm spokesman declined to comment on the reported layoffs.

By: DocMemory
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