Derek K. Aberle - QUALCOMM, Inc.
Management
Hey, Rod, this is Derek. So as we pointed out at the outset of the year, this year and probably even going forward into fiscal 2017, the externally implied rate is going to fluctuate quite a bit quarter-over-quarter. If you look back in Q3, we were north of 3.2%. Then this quarter it swings down to 2.5%. Really the main driver in this quarter was the amount of catch-up that came in within the quarter, both – all of it really coming from Chinese OEMs, a combination of folks reporting under the NDRC terms, but also a significant portion of that under the lower rates that apply to 3-mode. So we think that's largely sort of a historical thing. If you look at the projections for 3-mode in China, they are expected to be below 30% of the volume at China Mobile by the end of 2016, end of calendar 2016. So we think this is just going to be kind of the fluctuation that we pointed out would happen as we signed agreements and brought in catch-up. For the year, we came pretty close to the 2.9% longer-term kind of normalized rate we talked about in February at the Analyst Day. I expect we're going to see some continued fluctuations through 2017, but structurally and in terms of how we see the future unfolding, I think you can sort of think of that normalized 2.9% as a good longer-term metric. And we do expect next quarter will be up, because even if we conclude some additional deals that we're making progress on, the amount of the prior period catch-up will likely be smaller. And then on the end market, really, let me try to unpack it a couple of different ways. We're continuing to see good growth in units, so we're holding our guide for calendar 2016, which is about 8% year-over-year growth, and we put out a guide now for 2017, which is 7% year-over-year growth. And then the story that we really highlighted maybe three years ago is playing out very, very accurately to what we expected. The ASPs have continued to moderate in terms of erosion, and 2016 came in about where we called it at the beginning of the year, around 6% year-over-year erosion, and we expect that to further moderate into fiscal 2017. So one of the guideposts we set out in my remarks is if you look at the unit growth and the expected ASP erosion, we think the handset piece of the market in fiscal 2017 will grow about mid single digit. And then of course on top of that, you have the non-handset piece as well as some continued improvement that we expect to drive in compliance, which means we expect to grow the business, the QTL business, at or above the handset growth in the market.