I get the impression the resulting products aren't particularly high quality and there's some notion of protecting consumers, but I would imagine the primary motivator is the loss of license fees.
I don't want to come across too harshly, since you've engaged in the discussion and revealed that you work for qualcomm, but:
Do you morally and ethically agree with the position that Qualcomm should get paid a licence fee for the firmware for each and every resale of a particular chip? (vs the spirit of the first sale doctrine)
At the moment, it seems that you're giving tacit approval to this position.
I identified myself as an employee of Qualcomm because, per policy, we're supposed to do so when discussing the company. :)
I think it's reasonable to sell the chips under a restricted license - you don't expect people to use the chip in a product you don't know about. Consider a metaphor using a collection of short stories. You include your story in an anthology, which lets the buyer re-sell it at will. However, it would be questionable for the buyer to remove your story, and re-bind it as part of another book, which they then sell.
These actions are not restricting the actions of customers in any way (as far as I know), so they seem ok to me.