Qualcomm: Supporting Policies That Encourage Innovation

As published in Qualcomm's 2022 Corporate Responsibility Report

We have been a committed partner to countries around the world for more than 30 years, supporting policies that encourage innovation, foster the advancement of mobile technology and enable business-friendly environments globally. With each new generation of wireless connectivity, we strive to create shared success in collaboration with lawmakers and regulators, and to create new opportunities for local industries and communities.

We implement our public policy approach around four key principles:

• Participation: We engage in policy discussions with governments, organizations and industries around the world to advocate for policies that promote innovation and protect and foster new ideas in wireless connectivity. We are committed to helping policymakers at all levels understand our business model and role as an ecosystem enabler.
• Responsible Governance: We abide by all applicable laws and regulations regarding political contributions and expenditures, and our contributions are subject to the approval of our senior management with oversight by the Governance Committee of our Board of Directors.
• Transparency: We publicly disclose to the Federal Elections Commission all political contributions made by our Company and our Political Action Committee, and we abide by all legal obligations of the FCPA and similar legislation around the world.
• Policy Guides: We carefully monitor and evaluate developments that affect the world of wireless connectivity.

Our key public policy topics are 5G, invention and IP, spectrum, privacy, immigration and taxation. Our general positions are outlined below and published on our public policy website.

We published our global tax strategy to highlight our commitment to being a responsible and transparent corporate citizen. Our approach to tax is consistent with our CoBC and Code of Ethics and is premised on complying with applicable tax laws, maximizing stockholder value and delivering transparent tax reporting and disclosures. We also seek to pay the requisite taxes on profits generated from the activities performed in each jurisdiction.

Implementing our business strategy requires specialized engineering and other talent, as our revenues are highly dependent on technological and product innovations. To ensure that we can attract top talent, we must be able to hire the best engineers, regardless of their country of origin. Beyond fierce competition for talent across our industry and with our competitors, existing immigration laws make it more difficult for us to recruit and retain highly skilled foreign nationals, making the pool of available talent even smaller.

We engage in public policy efforts to support regulations that are aligned to today’s economic reality. Our Government Affairs team participates in diverse advocacy efforts that contribute to helping us ensure that immigration laws support our Company’s ability to develop leading-edge technologies specifically and our innovation-based global economy in general. Our advocacy efforts, as they relate to immigration laws and recruiting a global workforce, are generally implemented through collaborations with trade associations and diverse coalitions of employers. For more information on our approach to managing a diverse highly skilled workforce, please see our Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Index.

Key public policy topics

• 5G: 5G is a unified connectivity fabric that we believe will transform industries, create jobs and usher in an estimated $13.1 trillion in global sales activity in 203523. To achieve these benefits, we believe governments must adopt policies that support a comprehensive 5G rollout plan.
• Invention and IP: Invention, innovation and protection of IP are core drivers of economic growth and competitiveness. Without robust patent systems and strong global protection of IP, innovation would be significantly weakened.
• Spectrum: The benefits of wireless connectivity depend on the availability of adequate and appropriate radio spectrum. We believe in freeing new spectrum in a responsible way to meet the demands of consumers and businesses.
• Privacy: We believe that cultivating consumer trust through a foundation of security and privacy practices helps drive broader adoption and more personalized wireless technology offerings.
• Immigration: Highly skilled talent, especially in the areas of math, engineering and the sciences, is vital to the success of our Company and to the future of technological innovation around the world.
• Taxation: We support policies that incentivize innovation and enable American technology companies to comp

Learn more in Qualcomm's 2022 Corporate Responsibility Report