After  six successive y-o-y quarterly revenue declines Qualcomm grew revenues 10,2% in Q2, says TrendForce, while Broadcom’s 2,4% Q2 revenue decline marked five successive down quarters.

Qualcomm became part of the supply chain for Chinese brands’ flagship and high-end smartphones in Q1 and its 5G RF front-end products enjoyed increased market adoption.

These factors, combined with increased demand for its networking products led Qualcomm’s revenue to return to growth in 1Q20.

However, Broadcom was impacted by not only the China-U.S. trade war and the accompanying Entity List policy, but also the recently declining shipment of  iPhones.

NVIDIA and AMD, recorded stable revenue performances of 39.6% and 40.4% YoY increases in 1Q20, respectively.

Whereas NVIDIA benefitted from strong momentum in gaming graphics cards and data centers, AMD had the highest YoY revenue growth on the list of top 10 IC design companies due to rising revenues from its line of 7nm CPUs, in addition to demand for WFH-use notebook computers brought.

Marvell benefitted from increasing demand for networking and 5G infrastructure while being relatively less impacted by the China-U.S. trade war.

Conversely, Xilinx underwent an 8.7% YoY revenue decline due to the continuing influence of the trade war, marking the first time since 2016 the company suffered YoY declines in two consecutive quarters.

MediaTek and RealTek also benefitted from increased WFH demand, while the former saw increased market share in 4G smartphones, in turn raising its revenue. Novatek posted robust performances in smartphone DDI and TV SoC applications.

In Q2,  Broadcom and Xilinx are likely to see YoY declines in the short term, according to TrendForce.

On the other hand, pandemic-induced networking and notebook computer demand is expected to persist, meaning IC designers specializing in related applications are projected to maintain strong revenue performances in 2Q20.