Compare moats
Up to three covered companies, band by band. Every call is a curated editorial judgment, never a disclosed figure — and every band carries its cited basis.
| Qualcomm | FormFactor | |
|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | narrow Qualcomm's advantage is real but concentrated in one segment. The FY2025 10-K (filed 2025-11-05) describes its portfolio as "the most widely and extensively licensed in the industry" and says the industry "generally recognizes that any company seeking to develop, manufacture and/or sell certain cellular products requires a license or other rights to use our patents". That licensing leg produced $5,582M of FY2025 revenue against $38,367M at QCT, where Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi are all named in the vertical-integration risk factor and Apple already "utilizes its own modem... in certain of its smartphones". The filing frames the QCT loss as expected rather than realised. | narrow An independent tracker places FormFactor in a small group of suppliers, but the same tracker expects it to lose the top spot. TrendForce's June 2026 report on the probe card market (Part 2, 2026-06-26, https://www.trendforce.com/research/download/RP260626XO3) says 'FormFactor, Technoprobe, and MJC dominate, while Taiwan's CHPT, MPI, and WinWay gain share riding the AI wave'. It describes the economics as 'Consumable probe tips create a high-margin hardware subscription model; repair and replacement fees are key profit drivers'. Its outlook reads: 'Total revenue is forecast to surge sharply in 2026, with Technoprobe poised to overtake FormFactor as the top global supplier.' FormFactor's own margins over the last three fiscal years do not show exceptional returns. TradingPilot's fundamentals record from the FY2025 10-K (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1039399/000103939926000009/0001039399-26-000009-index.htm) shows gross profit of $258.6M on $663.1M of revenue in FY2023, $307.9M on $763.6M in FY2024 and $308.9M on $785.0M in FY2025. Gross margin has since risen to 50.7% (GAAP) in Q2 2026. A defended place among three dominant suppliers, but one whose rank is slipping to a rival, is a narrow moat rather than a wide one. |
| Moat type | intangibles ip The durable asset is intellectual property accumulated since Qualcomm's founding "in 1985". The patents have "broad coverage in many countries, including Brazil, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and countries in Europe" and are licensed "to hundreds of companies on industry-accepted terms", with royalties set as "a percentage of the wholesale (i.e., licensee's) selling price... subject to per unit minimums and/or per unit caps". R&D of $9,042M equalled 20% of revenues. Manufacturing is fabless "other than for certain of our RFFE modules and RF filter products", for which Qualcomm owns fabs in Germany and Singapore. | intangibles ip The tracker locates the advantage in proprietary probe technology. TrendForce's Part 1 report (2026-06-23, https://www.trendforce.com/research/download/RP260623JC3) says 'MEMS has become the mainstream probe process; proprietary tip alloy formulas are now the key differentiator for current capacity and longevity'. FormFactor's own example is SmartMatrix, its full-wafer contactor for high-bandwidth memory (HBM). On the Q1 2026 call (https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/04/29/formfactor-form-q1-2026-earnings-transcript/), management called it 'FormFactor's differentiated Smart Matrix full wafer contactor technology'. The consumable-tip model TrendForce describes is a recurring-revenue feature of the product rather than a separate lock-in, so intangibles/IP is the better-supported moat source. |
| Leadership | co leader Leadership is clear in licensing and contested in silicon. The 10-K names no rival licensing programme and asserts the portfolio is "the most widely and extensively licensed in the industry", while calling QCT's industries "intensely competitive" and naming eleven competitors (Broadcom, HiSilicon, MediaTek, Mobileye, Nvidia, NXP, Qorvo, Samsung, Skyworks, TI, UNISOC); "continue to be a leader in mobile" appears in a list of things future success depends on, so it reads as aspiration, not share. The band therefore rests on the licensing leg, roughly 13% of revenue. FY2025 10%-plus customers were 21%, 20% and 13%; in 9M FY2026 only two cleared 10%. | co leader TrendForce's Part 2 report (2026-06-26) names 'FormFactor, Technoprobe, and MJC' as the dominant suppliers and says 'Total revenue is forecast to surge sharply in 2026, with Technoprobe poised to overtake FormFactor as the top global supplier', which implies FormFactor holds the top rank now and that TrendForce expects it to lose that rank. In logic, the rival reports a large position. Technoprobe's May 2026 company presentation (https://www.technoprobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Technoprobe-Company-Presentation-May-2026.pdf, citing Yole's Q3 2024 test consumables monitor) gives Technoprobe 'Market Share: 34%' of the $1.6 billion 2024 logic probe card market and 60% of the $937 million MEMS logic probe card market. TrendForce gives no percentage for FormFactor. A shared front rank, with the overall lead forecast to pass to Technoprobe, is co-leadership. |
| Pricing power | moderate QTL margins held at 72% in FY2025 and 73% in 9M FY2026, though Q3 FY2026 alone slipped to 69% from 71%, and the $111M revenue gain there is attributed to revenues per unit "primarily driven by favorable mix" rather than to price. At QCT, the fall to 26% from 30% is explained by "lower gross margin, primarily driven by higher product cost, partially offset by higher average selling prices" plus lower revenues, so the pressure is cost rather than price; FY2025 handsets rose $2,930M, of which $2.5B came from higher revenue per chipset. Against that, "declining average selling prices" is a standing risk-factor title, "particularly pronounced in emerging regions and China". | moderate Gross margin sat near 39-40% for three years, per TradingPilot's fundamentals record from the FY2025 10-K ($258.6M on $663.1M, $307.9M on $763.6M and $308.9M on $785.0M for FY2023-FY2025). It then jumped. The Q2 2026 results release (https://seekingalpha.com/pr/20600102, 2026-07-29) reports GAAP gross margin of 50.7%, against 38.4% in Q1 2026 and 37.3% in Q2 2025, and guides Q3 2026 to 52.0% plus or minus 1.5%. Management attributes the gain to cost and yield rather than price. On the Q1 2026 call it said 'pricing really is not a driver of the gross margin improvement. It's COGS reduction and our operations team continuing to improve yields and cycle times'. TrendForce describes consumable probe tips as 'a high-margin hardware subscription model'. Margins are higher now, but FormFactor itself does not credit price for the improvement. |
| Summary | Qualcomm has two legs pointing in opposite directions. QTL (FY2025 revenue $5,582M, EBT margin 72%) rests on a portfolio the 10-K calls "the most widely and extensively licensed in the industry", with royalties struck on the licensee's wholesale device price under per-unit minimums and caps; its durability is dated in the filing, since "our patent license agreements with key OEMs are generally long-term, with terms expiring at varying dates between fiscal 2027 and 2031", some with binding-arbitration renewal clauses, and Huawei's licence has already expired, removing its royalties from QTL revenue from Q2 FY2025. QCT ($38,367M, 87% of segment revenue) is the leg under pressure: its three 10%-plus customers all build their own silicon, Apple already ships its own modem, and QCT EBT margin fell to 26% in Q3 FY2026 from 30%. | FormFactor makes probe cards, the consumable interfaces used to test chips at wafer level, for foundry and logic customers and for DRAM including HBM. It also has a Systems business, whose co-packaged-optics probing products management said on the Q1 2026 call were ramping. TrendForce's June 2026 probe card reports name FormFactor, Technoprobe and MJC as the dominant suppliers. They say MEMS probes are now mainstream, with 'proprietary tip alloy formulas' the key differentiator. They describe consumable probe tips as 'a high-margin hardware subscription model', with order visibility stretching 'from one quarter to up to two years'. FormFactor is benefiting: Q2 2026 revenue was $258.2 million, up 31.9% year over year, and GAAP gross margin was 50.7% against 37.3% a year earlier. On the Q1 2026 call, management said a second HBM customer was increasing adoption of SmartMatrix, and that networking probe cards had made a leader in high-performance compute a 10% customer. The limits are competitive. TrendForce forecasts that Technoprobe will overtake FormFactor as the top global supplier in 2026, and says Taiwanese suppliers CHPT, MPI and WinWay are gaining share. Technoprobe's May 2026 presentation, citing Yole, puts its own share at 34% of the 2024 logic probe card market and 60% of MEMS logic probe cards. |
| Chain position | Every figure and quotation is drawn from the FY2025 10-K and the Q3 FY2026 10-Q. Where the filings state no market share, the share band is left unknown rather than inferred, and barrier bands follow the filings' own language, which states a barrier to entry only for automotive. | A wafer-test consumables supplier between chipmakers and tester makers. Its customers include HBM and DRAM makers and foundry/logic chip designers. TrendForce's Part 1 report (2026-06-23) says 'Advantest and Teradyne have taken stakes in Technoprobe, FormFactor, and MJC, signaling accelerated vertical integration ahead.' |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.13 at weight 0.20 · swarm bearish Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.13 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |