Qualcomm vs. Intel: What Recent Revenue Trends Tell Investors

Robert Izquierdo, The Motley Fool

Sat, May 23, 2026 astatine 9:04 AM CDT 4 min read

Qualcomm: Cyclical Revenue Trends

Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) chiefly generates gross by processing and licensing foundational wireless technologies and selling integrated circuits to instrumentality manufacturers worldwide.

While establishing a conjugation with respective companies to program planetary 6G deployment, it reported astir 70% nett income borderline for the 4th ended March 29, 2026.

Intel: Sustaining Larger Revenue Scale

Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) earns its gross by designing and manufacturing machine components, processors, and computing systems for archetypal instrumentality manufacturers and unreality providers.

It announced a multi-year collaboration with Alphabet-owned Google to make next-generation unreality infrastructure, and it reported astir 39% gross borderline for the 4th ended March 28, 2026.

Why Revenue Matters for Retail Investors

Revenue serves arsenic a foundational metric that shows investors the full magnitude of wealth a concern brings successful earlier operating expenses are deducted. It’s important due to the fact that it reveals whether a corp is successfully attracting customers and increasing its wide concern measurement implicit time.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Quarterly Revenue for Qualcomm and Intel

Data source: Company filings. Data arsenic of May 19, 2026.

Foolish Take

Both Qualcomm and Intel person experienced lumpy gross implicit the past fewer years, but that could alteration with the accomplishment of artificial intelligence. The tech was a crushed down Intel stock’s fall, which reached a 52-week debased of $18.97 past twelvemonth owed to capitalist concerns implicit the company’s quality to capitalize connected AI. That changed successful 2026 arsenic shares went connected a historical tally to deed an all-time precocious of $132.75 connected May 11.

Intel’s stock terms reversal was owed to a fig of high-profile deals, specified arsenic its concern with Google and Elon Musk’s Terafab project. The chipmaker besides saw gross successful its fiscal archetypal quarter, ended March 28, emergence 7% twelvemonth implicit twelvemonth to $13.6 billion. The institution expects Q2 income of astatine slightest $13.8 billion, signaling a caller inclination of rising revenue, which reignited capitalist assurance successful Intel’s AI prospects.