Though Qualcomm's revenue bump was small, its net income is up 22 percent over last quarter to $1.44 billion. That can also be attributed, in part, to improved sales of its more profitable high-end chips. However, another big reason is that the company is licensing more of its chipsets and technology to China-based OEMs like Huawei, Xiaomi and ZTE, it said. Overall, Qualcomm's licensees sold $62.6 billion worth of devices.

The immediate future of the company looks good, though there could be a few dark clouds. Samung is going to release it's much-leaked Galaxy Note 7 shortly, a smartphone that's expected to have Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 821 CPU in the US, Europe and other markets. That CPU, which gives about a 10 percent performance bump over the 820 model, will likely also appear in upcoming Nexus phones and other important models. However, Apple could switch from Qualcomm to Intel modems on its next model, and as it sold some 231 million phones last year, that could impact the chip company's bottom line.