Qualcomm reported third-quarter revenue of $9.95 billion, down 4% year over year, guided fourth-quarter profit below consensus, and said revenue from Apple will decline faster than it previously expected. The stock fell more than 7% after hours. Earlier the same day, the company disclosed a ten-year agreement to supply chips for BMW’s future digital cockpit and advanced driver-assistance systems. Both disclosures are accurate descriptions of the company. They are describing different decades.

Qualcomm has signed a ten-year agreement to supply chips for BMW’s future digital cockpit and advanced driver-assistance systems, extending a relationship that already produced a jointly developed automated driving stack into the next generation of the manufacturer’s software-defined vehicle architecture. Ten years is an unusual public commitment length even by automotive standards, and it reflects how the qualification process actually works. A cockpit and driver-assistance platform is validated as a system: silicon, board design, thermal envelope, operating system, safety certification, and the toolchain the manufacturer’s own software teams build against.