Norm had his flaws because he depended on long time allegiances with guys who were not exactly at the top of their field. That does not mean he was a failure at what he was doing it means that his personnel was ill equipped to execute what he was doing. That being said the adversarial relationship that was obvious between the CIO and CFO was not good for Qualcomm and that is because the CFO had his agenda and his agenda only. Eliminate costs at every turn in the last 5 years the CFO has done EVERYTHING he can to reduce the cost and it is obvious the short term lack of quality is not a concern and he is prepared to go the distance long term which is inexplicably supported by the board and institutional investors DESPITE this CFO and CEO ability to deliver on their key agenda items.
One might point to success in the RFFE but that was a by product of trying to acquire NXPI, they stumbled upon something they can make a little money at whilst losing the piece that would allow them to enter other markets in a bigger way.
This Board has sunk tons of money into the server space to gain not penny in revenue from it and wants everyone to believe that they have not exited the space but are happy to be a simple player in edge computing for cellular carriers. Is that really a market? If so I hadn't heard any mention of it until SM mentioned it.
Sell off any and everything except chip manufacturing and IP. Why? A profitable BU is still a profitable BU. It may be declining or it may be building but this management has proven it cannot incubate ANYTHING effectively. They forced things to market too fast and then withdrew funding making the BU fend for itself, and even when a BU was successful in business apparently that isn't enough for the likes of SM and GD who believe they cannot support something that doesnt have 100's of millions in revenues.
I think as employees we know where the failure is and WallStreet along with this BOD will all make money while destroying a company. It is increasingly apparent that SM and GD don't care if this company was torn apart they just want to do the tearing.