The whole cellular modem chip business is a dead end anyway. You all know it. The „What’s next?“ questions are comings more frequently than ever before. We are already the only company that can make money from modems in the higher end market. Soon, even that will be over. Let’s face it, 5G is just another desperate attempt at extending the life of a comatose patient. At some point, 5G modems will become a commodity and nothing meaningful that the market would be interested in will come after that. Voice will go more and more via ubiquitous Wifi (it‘s been a while for me since I had my last real cellular voice call). So unless there is some magical innovation going on that I don‘t know about, it‘s another 3 years before all of this will begin to go into a steep decline. The fat years are definitely over.
It’s not just us - we will just be the last ones to go. Intel will exit the business soon. I have several friends there at management level who are very actively seeking for a safety net outside of Intel (and outside of the mobile business), as they know it’s going to happen in the fairly near term. That will already put a huge pressure on salaries. Then just wait a few more years, and we are going to bleed out slowly, as the whole business becomes less and less relevant.
And no, I am not being a pessimist. I have always been an optimist. I have been in this business for 20 years. When 2G was taking off, I believed that 3G will become a huge cash cow for us, and it did. I believed that 4G would take off in a major way and it did. But 5G is the last product on the roadmap that private users are going to care about. So unless you‘re lucky like me and are going to be set up for retirement within the next years, keep your skill sets relevant and your CVs updated.
Thought this deserved a bump for making a good point. OP is @PwDmaWx-3mgd.