One of the major pharmaceutical firms is buying/leasing one of the QCOM buildings in Sorrento Valley. Maybe biotech IS the new "high tech." Just like telecommunications and other devices replaced DoD work.
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Some of us saw it coming 3+ years ago just looking at the roadmaps: more of the same at lower tech nodes. Q failed together with others to find an exit and kept digging in the same hole desperately. It is the fate of building such complex systems from pure HW perspective. It is in the same spot as Intel: flat demand for a product that has little new to offer. The future is not in HW SoC alone, but in a super-system that includes cloud, data mining, user experience, sensors, ... The era of defining the basic building blocks (bricks) in this domain is mature now. Start thinking what you can do with them to create value that can be monetized.
Destiny. Karma got QC. After many years of corrupt hiring practices (H1B slave labor to replace Americans) the innovation went away. QC is reaping what they sowed. Corrupt executives and bought politicians should go to jail.
Before Qualcomm, I worked at General Dynamics in San Diego. There was a time when GD ruled. Everybody I met around town worked there. Then (just after a major construction investment, like the one at Q) the same thing happened.
Last year I began fearing that Qualcomm might follow the same trajectory. Maybe major employers have a life cycle.
This time, however, I don't see a new one ready to absorb the newly unemployed.