Qualcomm renews Apple patent license, effective April 1, 2027

Qualcomm Incorporated announced on 24 September 2026 that it has renewed its global patent license agreement with Apple. The renewed agreement takes effect on 1 April 2027, the San Diego chipmaker said in a press release.

“We are pleased to extend the Apple license agreement,” said John Han, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Qualcomm Technology Licensing (QTL), the unit that runs Qualcomm's patent licensing business.

Terms were not disclosed

The announcement gave no price, no term for the new agreement and no detail on what changes relative to the current licence. That deal, signed in April 2019, ran for six years with a two-year option to extend, so its term ends in March 2027 — the month before the renewal takes effect.

One company, two very different businesses

Qualcomm's patents and its licensing arm, QTL, sit in Qualcomm Incorporated, while engineering and the chip business — the QCT semiconductor unit behind Snapdragon processors — operate inside the subsidiary Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. Licensing is the smaller business by revenue but the bigger one by profit: according to CNBC's account of the 2019 dispute, royalties were about 23% of Qualcomm's revenue in fiscal 2018 yet produced the majority of its operating income, and QTL earned $5.1 billion at a 68% operating margin.

A settlement that has held since 2019

The licence now being renewed grew out of litigation. In April 2019 Qualcomm and Apple dismissed all lawsuits worldwide, including claims involving Apple's contract manufacturers, and signed a six-year global patent licence effective 1 April 2019 with a two-year extension option, together with a multiyear chipset supply agreement. The settlement also included a one-time payment from Apple to Qualcomm of an undisclosed amount. The renewal keeps a royalty stream that QTL relies on for a large share of its profit in place — on terms only the two companies know.