No Snapdragon, no problem for Samsung

Possible subhead: If so, stock market not buying it -- today, anyway

Tech giant Samsung this week announced third-quarter earnings that interrupted an almost two-year decline in profits. It also increased its guidance for future results. Some analysts are saying the news suggests that the South Korean company did the right thing earlier this year when it decided not to use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 chip in its flagship smartphone.

Samsung used its own processor in its Galaxy S6. Some say that contributed to yesterday's (October 7) more optimistic forecast of future earnings. Samsung's good news "is bad news for Qualcomm, which had hoped for a return to the next Samsung flagship smartphone," says Mark Hibben of Seeking Alpha today (October 8).

On January 28 of this year, Qualcomm announced that a major customer had dropped its Snapdragon 810. It turned out to be Samsung. Qualcomm stock closed that day at $69.51. It kept going down. Today, the stock rose 1.8 percent to $57.67. Clearly, the stock has taken a beating this year — one reason that it is laying off of 15 percent of its workforce.