The outfit said in a trading update that the licensing side of its business, which flogs intellectual property rights to the likes of Apple and Samsung, would deliver "single-digit" growth rather than the 10pc it thought.

What is odd is that the company had been tied to the success of Apple's iPhone 6, for which it designed the graphics microchip. It should be making a fee for every handset sold and be in clover.

Sir Hossein Yassaie, the company's chief executive, did not explain why the Apple money had not made much different, if it had arrived at all.

But Imagination has repeatedly appealed to the City not to overestimate the significance of each quarter in an industry in which it takes several years for investments to deliver sales.

On Wednesday it argued the muted licence sales were "due to timing rather than any fundamental change in demand for our product".

There was a strong performance for MIPS, the main mobile processor business it acquired two years ago in an attempt to challenge the dominance of ARM, which is in return moving in on Imagination's graphics stronghold. The MIPS unit beat royalties expectations.

Imagination is aiming to challenge fellow British chip designer ARM in the smartphone processor market.