Qualcomm profit rises 18% in first quarter

Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) sailed the high seas of profits yesterday as the cellphone chipmaker boasted 18% profit growth for its Q1 period. The San Diego-based chipmaker said that strong demand for wireless handsets with advanced, 3G data speed chips that allow internet surfing and multimedia downloads were responsible for the profit increase.

In stark contrast to Motorola Inc.'s (NYSE: MOT) news of slowing sales and deteriorating margins, Qualcomm's portfolio of CDMA-capable chips continued to show strong growth. Although large customer Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) has been losing customers hand over fist recently, Qualcomm is still generating sales growth somewhere. Most likely, a good chuck of it is coming from partner Verizon Communications, Inc. (NYSE: VZ) and its stake in Verizon Wireless.

Qualcomm's first quarter results included earnings of $767 million, or $0.46 cents per share, as revenue grew 20% to $2.44 billion for the quarter ended December 20. Although Qualcomm did not mention U.S. markets in general, it did say that excellent growth was happening in all markets it serves globally. With Sprint losing hundreds of thousands of customers and the Qualcomm-less AT&T, Inc. (NYSE: T) selling a ton of iPhones, markets outside the U.S. must be priming Qualcomm's pump for now.