As Qualcomm battled rival Broadcom’s hostile takeover bid earlier this year — probably the biggest threat to the company in its 33-year history — it continued to pour money into developing next generation 5G wireless technologies.

The aim was to speed up the rollout of ultra-fast 5G networks — where Qualcomm believes it has a lead on competitors.

“5G was supposed to be in 2020,” said Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon in an interview last week. “In the middle of the biggest crisis we’ve had, we maintained the level of research and development spending in order to accelerate 5G by more than a year.”

Now the question is will the maneuver pay off, or will it wind up being another misstep in what has been a rough two years for Qualcomm, San Diego’s largest publicly traded company.

Qualcomm barely escaped the clutches of Broadcom, surviving because of intervention by the Trump administration. It recently laid off more than 1,200 San Diego workers in a cost-cutting pledge aimed at appeasing frustrated investors.

For 21 months, it tried to acquire Dutch automotive chip-maker NXP Semiconductors, only to have the $43 billion deal derailed by Chinese regulators amid trade tensions with the U.S.

And it continues to fight legal attacks from Apple and antitrust regulators over its patent licensing practices, including a pending lawsuit from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Regulatory fines and Apple’s refusal to pay patent royalties have marred Qualcomm’s financial results. Revenue last year fell nearly 3 percent to $22.3 billion. Earnings slid 57 percent to $2.5 billion.

With the Apple fight showing no signs of ending and the collapse of the NXP deal, Qualcomm is in reset mode.

But Amon said its strategy hasn’t changed. It is betting cellular technologies will expand into many new industries beyond smartphones. That, coupled with the roll out of 5G networks, will get the company back on track.

Qualcomm typically does well when the mobile industry upgrades to a new generation of technology. Revenue for its chip division doubled during the transition from third generation 3G networks to today’s 4G LTE.

“Because of Qualcomm’s early investments, we are going to see 5G launch in the United States as early as April 2019,” said Amon. “You are going to be able to buy a 5G phone.”

Network operators are committed to 5G, and they can achieve a critical mass of coverage relatively quickly by adding 5G equipment to existing cell towers, said Amon.

Qualcomm sees a world that is quickly becoming hyper-connected, with wireless technology expanding into connected cars, health care devices, smart cities and smart homes, automated factories and security systems.

“We spent the last 30 years connecting people. We will spend the next 30 years connecting things, said Brian Modoff, Qualcomm’s executive vice president for strategy and acquisitions, at a recent event. “The exciting thing for the company is we are leveraging what we are already good at.”