May 1 (Reuters) - Qualcomm on Wednesday forecast fiscal third-quarter sales and adjusted profit above Wall Street expectations, driven by a faster-than-expected recovery in smartphone markets thanks to artificial-intelligence features.

Qualcomm forecast third-quarter sales and adjusted profit with midpoints of $9.2 billion and $2.25 per share, beating analyst estimates of $9.05 billion and $2.17 per share, according to LSEG data.

San Diego, California-based Qualcomm is the world's biggest supplier of chips for smartphones and counts both Apple and Samsung as customers. The company's sales declined sharply last year following a boom during the pandemic. The drop was felt especially in the Android phone market where Qualcomm draws most of its business.

The company faces competitive pressure from China's Huawei Technologies Co, which last year introduced a domestically made smartphone chip, and Taiwanese rival MediaTek , which last week said it expects rising sales this year as it gains market share among the premium-priced Android handsets.

For the fiscal second quarter ended March 24, Qualcomm's sales and adjusted profit were $9.39 billion and $2.44 per share, respectively, above analyst expectations of $9.34 billion and $2.32, according to LSEG data. (Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco and Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru Additional reporting by Noel Randewich in Oakland, California Editing by Matthew Lewis)