(Credit: Qualcomm)
Qualcomm may be best known for powering smartphones, but at the Computex trade show in Taiwan, the US chip vendor came to talk about Windows PCs and its play for a market that’s long been dominated by Intel and AMD.
“We’re going to be in the PC market forever,” said Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.
In a keynote, Amon detailed the company’s progress over the past year since it made a major push to sell Snapdragon X-powered Windows laptops. “We’ve very happy with the traction so far,” he said. “We have now over 85 plus [PC] designs that have launched or are in development."
The goal is to release 100+ product models by next year, giving consumers more choice for their next laptop purchases. In a shot at Intel and AMD, Amon also said Qualcomm entered the Windows PC business after Microsoft came to the company with a “desire to restore the performance and innovation leadership to the Windows ecosystem.”
(Credit: Qualcomm)One of Amon’s major announcements was that Qualcomm plans on expanding its Windows laptop focus to businesses and enterprises. He’s also betting that artificial intelligence, including on-device AI, will become so important to users that the technology will act like an operating system, rather than merely as a software tool or application.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips were designed to outperform rival silicon from Intel, AMD, and even Apple in terms of both performance, on-device AI workloads, and battery life. Still, one key challenge facing Arm-based laptops is software compatibility since existing Windows programs were built for x86 chips from Intel and AMD, rather than Qualcomm processors.
But in his keynote, Amon highlighted the surge in native Windows apps built for Arm-based chips. “We have 1,400 games that are running and optimized on Snapdragon. And we’re working with all the top global gaming studios,” he said, adding that Fortnite is on the way too.
Amon also noted: “93% of the users’ time using those devices are now on native experiences.” The remaining time is spent using an emulator to run x86 Windows apps.
Qualcomm and its partners plan on showing off some of their upcoming Snapdragon Windows laptops at Computex. So stay tuned for our coverage.