Latest news with #Amon
Hindustan Times
05-06-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Qualcomm prepares for Apple breakup as modem deal nears end
After over 15 years powering iPhones with its modem chips, Qualcomm appears to be preparing for life beyond Apple. Speaking on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid podcast, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon confirmed that the chipmaker is planning its business under the assumption that Apple will not renew its modem supply contract beyond 2027. 'We're planning our business assuming that they are going to use their own modem,' Amon said. 'And what's exciting about the company is all of this growth that we're creating, all of those other markets, including on Android.' Apple has been one of Qualcomm's biggest clients. In 2024 alone, analysts estimate that Apple paid more than $2.5 billion in patent licensing fees, with Qualcomm's modem revenue from Apple reaching between $5.7 billion and $5.9 billion. However, Apple's efforts to develop an in-house modem have been gaining pace, culminating in the launch of the C1 chip earlier this year in the iPhone 16e. Although the C1 offers better power efficiency, it does not support mmWave, a key 5G technology used in the US, limiting its deployment. Nonetheless, Apple is doubling down, with plans to include the chip in the upcoming iPhone 17 Air and reportedly working on an upgraded C2 modem. While Apple still has a valid modem contract with Qualcomm until March 2027, Amon appeared unconcerned about the potential end of the relationship. 'That's our contract,' he said. 'And if we don't get a new contract, that's what it is.' Interestingly, Amon's comments come just weeks after Qualcomm released a study, funded by the company, comparing Android phones with Snapdragon modems to Apple's C1. The study claimed Android devices offered better connectivity, though critics noted the methodology appeared tilted in Qualcomm's favour. Despite this, Amon downplayed any drama between the two tech giants, saying that the 'association about the Apple relationship…is not warranted.' With its Apple contract likely nearing its final years, Qualcomm is diversifying its roadmap. The company is exploring chips designed to connect to Nvidia's AI processors and investing heavily in Android, where its modem and SoC business continues to grow. 'We've seen incredible traction on Android,' said Amon, pointing to Qualcomm's strong position across global handset makers as evidence of resilience post-Apple. While Apple moves toward modem independence, Qualcomm is banking on its Android partners, and AI-driven opportunities, to drive the next phase of growth.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Qualcomm CEO on AI bets and surviving beyond Apple
You can catch Opening Bid on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. What started 40 years ago as a company focused on "quality communications" by Irwin Jacobs has morphed into Qualcomm (QCOM) today. The company is one of the biggest players in the chip industry, supplying products to Apple (AAPL) to power its iPhone and to automakers to power their increasingly digital cockpits. The company's market cap stands at an impressive $163 billion. At the helm as CEO since 2021 is 30-year Qualcomm veteran Cristiano Amon, who started at the company as an engineer. Amon has been moving aggressively to diversify the business away from Apple into areas such as industrial applications and, more recently, data centers. Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi sits down on the Opening Bid podcast with Amon to discuss the next 40 years for Qualcomm. Amon is fresh off a trip to Saudi Arabia, joining President Donald Trump and other top tech executives. Amon secured a key memorandum of understanding to help Saudi Arabia build out AI data centers. Sozzi and Amon discuss the trip and what greater trade tensions mean for Qualcomm's important China business. Last year, China represented 46% of Qualcomm's sales. Welcome to the opening bid podcast. I'm Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sazi. Of course, opening bid is sponsored by Vanguard. You're gonna get a lot smarter on all things technology and AI because I got a very special guest here that it's coming to me at the NASDAQ in Times Square on a very special moment for his company. That's Qualcomm President CO Cristiano Alman. Good to see you. Good to see you, Brian. It's been a while and we're here at the NASDAQ 40 years since Qualcomm is that even possible? It's, it's times went fast and and it goes fast if you're busy. So, uh, so what are some of those? I mean, you started the company 30 years ago, 1995 as an engineer. What are some of the, I guess, the historical fun facts about Q Qualcomm that the average human may not know? Well, it's, uh, it's hard to answer the question. There's so many different things, but I will highlight, um, you know, I joined 1995 right before the very first launch of a CDMA operated in the world. A couple of things, this journey, I think it's a journey of a company always kind of fighting against the odds try to prove everybody that you know the technologies that we dream of, they work, they will change the world. I remember when I started, nobody believed CDMA. We had to build our own infrastructure. We had to build our own to build everything to prove it, take it all over the world to show that the technology is incredible. I remember when 3G moved to 4G, everybody said Qualcomm is gone, is gone because we're gonna go from CMA to OFDMA and we have to prove everybody we're the OFDMA leader, uh, in the phones were becoming computer. We had from a wireless communication company, no computing technology. We end up building the very first processor, a company they had built no processors. The very first processor that could run an OS, uh, and had a clock at 1 gigahertz speed that fits in the palm of your hand, and that was the beginning of our journey towards what Snapdragon is today, uh, we, we the spirit we realize that technology could be disruptive to so many industries. People told us you can never be an auto company unless you buy somebody and look at where we are in auto. Somebody said you can't go to the PC market. That's a market already occupied by incumbents and never be displaced. Here's where we enter the PC market and now we're in this journey on AI and industrial data centers. So those 40 years it's been the reinventing ourselves, come up with technology that to prove to people it's better, it's going to work and just executing against all odds. That's that's the company in 40 years. What I didn't realize, I'm a bit of a corporate name geek. I never realized all these years of cover from your company and some of your predecessors at the company. It stands for Quality communications. The company was founded by Irwin Jacobs, and was focused on quality communications. We build you know, I was just uh uh reminding people it's interesting. I have to sometimes people ask me about the Qualcom name that it means quality communication and I thought, wow, I have the best example ever to describe what that actually means. You probably remember when there were the Mars ingenuity helicopter, the NASA mission that you have the very first flight in a non in an atmosphere in a different Mars engineered helicopter. The Mars engineered helicopter, the whole helicopter when NASA had this mission runs on it came out of the rover start flying around. There's flight control it has cameras. It has communication sending radio signals. The beauty of this whole, uh, project with NASA is exact the same Snapdragon they were on people's phones like the one that we build hundreds of millions, and the thing is if you put that into go in a rocket in extreme temperature pressure. You go to a different planet, you have to boot and work, and he has no option. He has to work. It's just one, so I cannot think of anything better to describe. We build quality stuff. This is quality communications atwork. So it's, uh, it's the end of May, and I'm watching, um, the news of course on on Yahoo Finance, and then I see, I see you shaking hands with the crown prince. uh, the president is to the Crown Prince in Saudi Arabia is part of that delegation. I know that guy, it's Cristiano. We used to talk to him. He was the president of Qualcomm beforehand or just before you became CEO and that before we get into why you were there, that had to be a surreal moment as someone as someone that started as an be there in that moment, what was that like? Uh, the whole thing, the whole thing for me, look, I'm incredibly proud and I feel, uh, you know, privileged to have the trust of, uh, you know, from our board our investors and most important like all the Qualalcon employees to lead this company. When I joined Qualalcon as an engineer, I never had any dreams. I'll be a CEO uh, never expected that we will be relevant in in an important partner of so many industries, so many it's incredible. At the same time, it comes with a huge pressure that, you know, there's so many folks at Qualcomm that that's counting on me that you know I can't, I have to show up every day and do my best because I cannot disappoint the trust, but yes, it's incredible. It's I never expected it's uh it's really humbling and uh that was a great moment for me. Sowhat did Qualcomm secure from that trip? Look, uh, as you know, we, we just, uh, released a little bit of some, I'll say, uh, data points they're showing what we're doing next on a diversification journey and uh we're entering the data center space. We feel that's massive opportunity is this massive t is going to grow for decades and I think we have some technology that is very unique and have proven that we can probably do one of the world's best CPUs and when AI starts to go from creation in those data centers into scale production, it gets we develop AI as as as an industry for that to be used in every computer when you go to scales performance per watt performance per dollar matter, and that's kind of the the DNA that we have from building the devices at the edge. So we look at the data center opportunity we can build CPUs. We can build inference AI process for the data this new company in Saudi called Humane which is incredibly disruptive. It's a big countrywide project to start diversifying their economy. I feel like in the same way about what they're trying to do, what Qualcom is trying to do, we're trying to diversify and create new areas of growth and betting on them. They're betting on Qualcomm. So, uh, what we announced in that trip, it was a combination of very strategic projects and it kind of matches some of the initiatives we have for growth and diversification. The first one is our, our activity now, uh, entering the data center space, and we're gonna build chips for the humane data center. That's one, with the new, uh, Saudi AI company called second one is we've been talking about the industrial transformation at the edge, the next industrial semis in the age in the age of AI, so we have a very broad partnership with Orranco, which is the one of the world's largest, uh, you know, energy companies using AI at the edge to transform their operations, very exciting project that that we have there. The number as we enter in the PC space, they're building very interesting PCs for their market. They have their large language model called AA that they developed, which is gonna be the front end in Arabic for all of the different applications, uh, wanted to connect those PCs with their data center offer inference as a server uh service that's gonna be part of what we actually been talking about which is this change of a PC into an AI device. So those are some of major projects. There's more, I think that we're doing in Saudi Arabia. That was a very successful trip for us. We saw a lot of big numbers, not just from your company, a lot of companies that went there Nvidia, AMD went there. What is that Saudi Arabia opportunity mean?Return financially to a business like. Look, um, we, if you step back, we said between now and 2029, uh, we're gonna be uh generated about $22 billion of our goal, our goal is when we get to fiscal 29, we'll have $22 billion of non handset revenue which is all of those growth initiatives actually coming to scale and we're gonna be a diversified company at that point in the stuff that we're doing in the data center is not included in that number. That's an upside to that number. Uh, we, we have a long term commitment in Saudi Arabia. Uh, I, I saw that yesterday they kind of indicated a $22 billion I think, uh, uh, you know, commitment, uh, to Qualcomm, but it's just the beginning. I think we've been products for the data centers, that's incremental to our plan. What we're doing in PCs, we're doing in Ronco is part of our $22 billion plan. You should look at this as more certainty and data points on this trajectory that we are to diversify the company and achieve our $22 billion in our handsets by fiscal 29. All right, hang with us, uh, Christiane, we're gonna go off for a quick break. We'll be right back on opening welcome back to opening bid here at the NASDAQ in Times Square. Having a great chat here with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Aman. Um, so the data center push. There's an, there's an AMD in there. There's an Intel, and I, if I'm right, didn't Qualcomm try data centers in the past? Like how do you make this successful this time? Yes, so it's, it's a great point and maybe are two answers. Let me start with the first one easy. Uh, it is a market that has a number of incredible players like, uh, on CPU you have AMD, you have Intel, you have ARM indicated that they're gonna build a chip enter in the data center. You have some of the companies that've been building a lot of the custom, uh, CPU. My answer to you is the same answer I I provided before when people ask me about is a market actually unlike the data center doesn't grow as much. Data centers growing a lot. It's a very big time, but in PCs people said there's a lot of established players are you gonna enter? And the answer is if I have something that is disruptive, it is unique, it's innovative, and it will add value there's gonna be room for me and I think that's we did with Snapdragon the same approach when you think about data center actually data center, unlike PC is a massive, will continue to grow at a very high uh growth rates for decades. If we can build something unique and disruptive, there's room for Qualcomm. Now the second part of the answer is our journey we started, if you remember, we were the first company to start to build an armM compatible, uh, CPU, uh, for the data we did way before everybody else and I'll be honest, we're a little early at the time for the opportunity. What happened and uh when we attempted to do that, there were two, obstacles. One obstacle is the software ecosystem wasn't mature at that time. The data center opportunity was a general purpose computing that needs to run everything that is on the cloud which has been built on X86, and the arm ecosystem wasn't ready at all at that was not until companies like Amazon with their graviton uh uh uh program that actually did a lot of the heavy lifting to bring the arm ecosystem on board that doesn't existed at the time so that was very limiting on, on, on the addressable market. The other reason at the time is the entire industry was looking for alternative to the incumbent was in tell that uh uh the incumbent on the data something happened. uh, EMD started to use a better transistor going to, uh, TSMC, and, uh, and that become the alternative to Intel and the ARM, uh, plan, you know, got pushed aside. So I think we were a little early. We learned a bunch of things to the process we're early we focused the company on putting a plan in place to build growth and diversification in those markets we're doing right we get those things in motion and they're being in the process of execution, create this opportunity for now to enter at the right time. Why is now the right time? And I think that's a more interesting answer to the question. First, the nature of the data center is changing. You still have general purpose but now AM is where the growth is with a much more mature software ecosystem. We checked that box. The second thing is data centers are being built for AI. Every time you build data centers with incredible, I think Nvidia GPUs used for training, you need CPUs that go you have a lot of custom activity, so that's a, that's a different approach than what the CPU job was. It's very focused and it's very focused on performance per dollar, performance per watt. That's kind of our other thing is the opportunity for inference as AI gets scale. It needs to be economic. It needs to compete. You look at how people start talking about tokens per dollar and why tokens per dollar starts to move to the Middle East because energy is cheaper there when there is a performance per dollar and performance per watt, it creates an opportunity for look at those things. We look at our assets. We have proven to have one of the best CPU teams in the world. What we did in just phones and auto and PCs. We can build a great CPU if you believe, um, you know, companies are gonna build arm chilets like AM saying they're gonna do themselves. If you believe those companies can do it and there's an opportunity, Quin can do a real chip company. We ship 40 billion components a year and we have a great CPU. That's opportunity and AI is gonna get so much scale and it's gonna beinteresting. A large part of your business is of course China, about 45-46% of your your business. When you're on that trip in Saudi Arabia, are you able to get a minute or two with the president and, hey, you know, we're a US company. We have this big business in China and then secondarily, has your strategy changed because of the trade war? Look, this is, uh, I I actually love answering this question, and you're probably gonna hear, um, in this interview something different than uh what I've been saying. What news person doesn't like differentfire away, Christiane. Yes, um, I'm actually gonna explain something a little different than I have been talking about it fact that we're very successful in China, uh, think about it this way. The fact that we're very successful in China is a feature. It's not a bug, it's a feature. And the reason I say that is because we move at the speed of China. If you look at what happened in the transformation of uh of uh many industries uh in have been there uh and we have not only survived with Trive that means we can be competitive in China. It's one of the most competitive markets in the world we can be competitive in China. We move at China speed. That's a feature. You want an American company that is going to be providing for the world to be extremely competitive and be able to win everywhere with innovation, not only in the US, not only, uh, in Europe, not only in, uh, in Korea, in Japan, but everywhere including China. That's the first part. The second the reason we have a big business in China is because what we do matters. Uh, if you are, and that's true for the entire semi-in industry for companies that are building not commodity but leading technologies true for Nvidia it's true, uh, for Qualcomm, it's true, uh, for all of the other semiconductor companies. If what you're doing is innovative, it's just a function of GDP size you're gonna have a big business everywhere, you're gonna have a big business in China. # a company that is actually the trade deficit, we export semiconductors. Actually what we're doing is in the right direction of trade, high value semiconductors that have been exported to in the right direction of trade, and then the last point is you want to end up in a situation that the American technology is exactly winning at the world scale. We want to be in a situation that is American technology for the world that drives our innovation economy that give us scale that we continue to invest and actually support and partner uh of the companies they're gonna be needing our technologies for years to come when you look at this whole package, I think we're very proud I think of the business we have in China and I think in the many discussions we've been having with the administration, I think like I said before, um, it's good to actually have uh American technology in a way that it can win win in the markets worldwide including China and be in the right direction of trade being supporting our innovation engine and uh we like we it's a technology that is developed in the United States and as a matter of fact you know because you've been covering us for a while we have one of the world's largest licensing business and actually we get China, but of our customers for intellectual property, that's another great thing. So I think in summary we want to put ourselves in a position that we can actually be an example what a successful cooperation and trade be between two countries, the two countries are, and I think that's what we'll continue to do. I'd loveto end on this, um, Christiano, for as long as I've talked to you, you've always been focused on diversification, um, and part of that I would think is because of the Apple business, of course you make a key player a long time in the Apple supply now I think the stat was from Evercore. You saw you're about to see you may have 70% market share in the iPhone 17 that might continue to decrease. Is there a day when Qualcomm is not involved in the Apple ecosystem because they make their ownchips? Look, we have been incredibly transparent about this, and, uh, every time we have a contract with Apple, we made it very public where they are, so there is no guessing, right? So we had and I think we provide, uh, you do a verygood job of doing this. I, I, oh, it has always been, has always been very transparent. Thank you. So what we said is, uh, you know, in the iPhones, uh, they launch, uh, this year, uh, we expected, I think we indicated we expected to have about, uh, 70% share if I believe that's the metric we we said in the iPhones uh launching next year we expect to have about uh I believe the metric was 20%, 20% share and then we don't expect it to be in the iPhones, uh, launching that's our contract, you know, and, uh, if they, if we don't get a new contract, that's what it is, but and there's so much drama and association about, uh, the Apple relationship which I think it's, it's not warranted, to be honest, we're a great supplier for Apple. We provide a modem. Our contract has a beginning, has a middle, has an end. We communicated what it is. Apple's doing their own modem. We're planning our business assuming that they are going to use their own what exciting thing about the company is all of this growth that we're creating all of those other markets including on Android. Like if you look at our Android business is continued to grow. I think our customers are doing incredibly well. The China market dynamics when you look at share about uh what Android is it's a great dynamic for Cuco, and we'll continue to build great technologies. I think the Apple thing is we have a contract. We communicate with the end. That's how we're planning our business. The Apple is gonna be off the model 27. We're focused on everything else, everything else above that is upside. Fair to say that the next 40 years of Qualcomm will look different than the prior 40. Oh, absolutely. I cannot tell you one year of Qualcomm that is uh the same as, uh, the past year, and I think that's what make the company exciting. All right, we'll leave it there. Always good to see you, Qualcomm president and CEO Christianoone here at the Nasdaq in Times Square. Appreciate you coming on the pod. Thank you, Brian. All right, that's it for the latest episode of Opening bid. Continue to hit us with all those, uh, hearts and thumbs up on YouTube and all the podcast platforms. Appreciate the love, appreciate the feedback, and we'll talk to you soon. For full episodes of Opening Bid, listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on our website. Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid is produced by Langston Sessoms Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Qualcomm CEO: We're diversifying beyond declining Apple business
Listen and subscribe to Opening Bid on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Qualcomm's (QCOM) next 40 years will look different than its past four decades as it seeks to diversify into data centers and cash in on the AI gold rush. But that also likely means going at things minus its lucrative business with Apple's (AAPL) iPhone. Qualcomm has been Apple's largest cellular modem provider, but the tech giant is transitioning to its own in-house-made C1 modem in a bid to boost margins. "That's our contract, you know, and if we don't get a new contract, that's what it is. But, and there's so much drama and association about the Apple relationship, which I think it's not warranted, to be honest," Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid podcast (watch above; listen-only below). The tech duo's licensing agreement ends in 2027. Research firm Futurum estimates that Qualcomm's annual modem revenue from Apple is between $5.7 billion and $5.9 billion. Analysts estimate Qualcomm will pull in about $43.5 billion in sales this year. Qualcomm has said publicly it expects to have a 70% share in iPhones launching this fall. That will drop to 20% for iPhones next fall, and then stand to be zero for iPhones debuting in fall 2027. Yahoo Finance caught up with the globe-trotting Amon — he's fresh off a visit to Saudi Arabia with other top execs and the Trump administration — at the Nasdaq. Amon began his career at Qualcomm as an engineer in 1995. "We're planning our business assuming that they [Apple] are going to use their own modem," Amon said. "And what's exciting about the company is all of this growth that we're creating, all of those other markets, including on Android. Like if you look at our Android business, it has continued to grow." To offset the lost Apple sales, Qualcomm continues to invest in the connected car cockpit and the internet of things domain. The company thinks it can grow its business from these two segments to $22 billion by 2030, up from $8.3 billion in fiscal year 2024. "Qualcomm's diversified growth across these specific verticals is credibly expected to significantly exceed the revenue scale of modem-only handset customers well into the era of 6G," Futurum researchers said in a note. The company also announced in mid-May that it plans to launch processors designed for data centers to power AI, which will connect to Nvidia (NVDA) chips. Qualcomm failed to successfully expand into data centers years ago and returns to the field with formidable rivals in AMD (AMD), Intel (INTC), and soon ARM (ARM). "It's a massive TAM [total addressable market] and will continue to grow at very high growth rates for decades. If we can build something unique and disruptive, there's room for Qualcomm," Amon said of the data center push. The Street has taken a wait-and-see approach to Qualcomm's stock, preferring to witness tangible progress in diversifying its business away from Apple. Qualcomm's stock has been trading at a price-to-earnings ratio discount to the S&P 500 (^GSPC) for the past three years, according to data from Evercore ISI tech analyst Mark Lipacis. The current PE multiple is roughly a 39% discount to the S&P 500. The stock also trades at a more than 20% discount versus its 20-year median PE. Shares are down 28% in the past year compared to a 13% advance for the S&P 500. "We expect Qualcomm's P/E to continue trading at a discount to the market until it demonstrates more traction into the IoT, Auto and PC markets," Lipacis added. Three times each week, Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi fields insight-filled conversations and chats with the biggest names in business and markets on Opening Bid. You can find more episodes on our video hub or watch on your preferred streaming service. Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Qualcomm CEO on AI bets and surviving beyond Apple
You can catch Opening Bid on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. What started 40 years ago as a company focused on "quality communications" by Irwin Jacobs has morphed into Qualcomm (QCOM) today. The company is one of the biggest players in the chip industry, supplying products to Apple (AAPL) to power its iPhone and to automakers to power their increasingly digital cockpits. The company's market cap stands at an impressive $163 billion. At the helm as CEO since 2021 is 30-year Qualcomm veteran Cristiano Amon, who started at the company as an engineer. Amon has been moving aggressively to diversify the business away from Apple into areas such as industrial applications and, more recently, data centers. Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi sits down on the Opening Bid podcast with Amon to discuss the next 40 years for Qualcomm. Amon is fresh off a trip to Saudi Arabia, joining President Donald Trump and other top tech executives. Amon secured a key memorandum of understanding to help Saudi Arabia build out AI data centers. Sozzi and Amon discuss the trip and what greater trade tensions mean for Qualcomm's important China business. Last year, China represented 46% of Qualcomm's sales. For full episodes of Opening Bid, listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on our website. Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid is produced by Langston Sessoms Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Yahoo
Qualcomm gambled on repeating its own ads at Computex, but did it pay off?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. As predicted, Qualcomm's Computex Keynote focused more on AI and AI-powered features on the Windows on Arm ecosystem rather than new announcements. Qualcomm is turning 40 this year, but as CEO Cristiano Amon stated, "it's a new Qualcomm," thanks to the company's investment in computing. Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon X series at Computex last year, but despite that timeline, Qualcomm's Computex presence did not revolve around chip announcements. Essentially: Qualcomm spent the entire 60 minute keynote dodging around the rumors of the second Snapdragon X Series chip generation to instead focus on their often-repeated performance claims, new systems, and Windows on Arm ecosystem updates. At a rather slim Computex for computing news, this could have been a moment for Qualcomm to shine with the second gen of it's Arm chips. Instead the company chose to gamble and focus on its partnerships with various manufacturers including Microsoft. But, did Qualcomm's gamble pay off? Qualcomm now has 1,400 games optimized for Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite. The company showed footage of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II on a Snapdragon X Elite system, though its uncertain whether the game will play smoothly across all of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series. Qualcomm showcased a lot of early gaming performance on the Snapdragon X Elite chipset on custom hardware, running on 80W systems that were never released to the public. Considering that history, it's hard to take Qualcomm's announcements at face value. Qualcomm and Epic Games will also be bringing Fortnite to Windows on Arm, which makes sense considering Qualcomm announced Snapdragon support for Epic Games Online Easy Anti-Cheat back in March. Qualcomm has reached 9% market share in the laptop market, thanks to a large portfolio of devices, including newly launched computes like the new Acer Aspire 14 and 16 AI, HP OmniBook 5, and new Microsoft Surface Pro 11-inch and Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch. Amon also shared statistics on Snapdragon's performance compared to Intel's Core Ultra 7 processor. But this is a skewed comparison from the jump. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite is a 12-core chipset while the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V is a mid-range 8-core CPU. And some of the comparisons were calculated on specific workloads like DaVinci Resolve's SuperScale FHD to 4K upscaling technology. Amon also repeated the claim that Snapdragon has "leading performance on an SoC in the laptop ecosystem." While this was true during the Snapdragon X Elite launch cycle, it has been overturned by recent launches from AMD, Apple, and Intel. Qualcomm has also expanded its portfolio of applications to include the top 200 most-used Windows apps into the Windows on Arm ecosystem. Part of this is thanks to Microsoft's new Prism emulation software which helps alleviate the key pain-point of Windows on Arm. However, there are still limits to Prism emulation and the Windows on Arm ecosystem. After all, what are those 200 applications? And are they actually the most-used apps? Qualcomm makes this claim based on data from Microsoft that was collected by snapshots of aggregated app usage data as of August 2024 on Copilot+ PCs. Of course, the problem with that data is that in August 2024, only Snapdragon X systems were in the Copilot+ ecosystem. AMD and Intel's AI PC chips didn't get rolled into Copilot+ until the end of 2024. So it's a bit of a skewed sample set. As always with Qualcomm's claims, Amon's claims are technically correct, but the real context is always in the details Qualcomm doesn't share. That said, Qualcomm has put in some serious work to fill out the Windows on Arm ecosystem. Just over a year ago, the Windows on Arm software ecosystem was almost unusably bare. That is no longer the case. But if you need a highly specialized application, it may not run on Windows on Arm, even emulated. Some key examples are the Autodesk suite, Parsec, and Adobe DreamWeaver and Substance 3DStager. In fact, despite Qualcomm's partnership with Adobe, the only applications that run natively on Snapdragon are Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom. Other applications like Illustrator and After Effects are expected to make it onto Snapdragon platforms, but are still not available through emulation yet. Qualcomm deserves recognition for the work done to build up an ecosystem. But it will still be years before Windows on Arm can even come close to the level of app-support you find on x86 systems. Cristiano took questions during the keynote from audience submissions and had them spoken aloud by a Snapdragon AI PC. So these questions ranged from AI for business to a hybrid future that combines computing, AI, automotive, and mobile ecosystems. Because these questions were collected from the whole keynote audience including Qualcomm staff, guests, OEM partners, and Computex industry attendees, many fed straight into Qualcomm's usual marketing stance about Snapdragon X Series performance and Qualcomm's view of a hybrid future. The most interesting statement from Amon during this segment was "I'm very bullish about smart glasses" and the future of AR and how it will evolve with AI PCs and better smartphones to augment our lives. Amon also took questions from press and analysts after the keynote to expand on Qualcomm's portfolio from data center to DragonWing to robotics. 'Robotics is natural to Qualcomm,' Amon said. Claiming robotics will be a big market for Qualcomm similar to the automotive market. As robots require a high degree of performance and strong battery life, and 'that's our DNA.' As for the future of the Oryon CPU cores behind the Snapdragon X Series processors, Amon would only enthuse 'the CPU team is very busy,' and that those interested in the future of Qualcomm's computing portfolio should 'come to Snapdragon Summit, you're going to like what you're going to see.' Qualcomm sees the future of computing as a hybrid environment between computers and smartphones, where one is an extension of the other. This view of the future colors everything Amon and Qualcomm's OEM partners discussed at Computex. However, is it an accurate view of the future? You can already access your smartphone data on your laptop in the Windows and macOS ecosystems. While there are differences in functionality, with some combinations working better than others. But phone to computer communication has been in the works for years now. In fact, I distinctly remember crashing my 2010 MacBook Pro by adding macOS X Mavericks on it to control my iPhone from my laptop back in 2013. While Amon is also bullish about on-device AI features with Snapdragon, Apple, AMD, Nvidia, and Intel are also pushing the same development. So it's hardly a unique feature to Snapdragon systems. To support this dream, Qualcomm is entering the commercial and data center spaces in the future. As for the highly anticipated Snapdragon X Elite Gen 2, it seems Qualcomm is holding all details on that chip for Snapdragon Summit in the fall. "It's not because we don't love GeForce, GeForce got us here": Nvidia brings the power of RTX 5060 to budget-friendly gaming laptops Apple REALLY doesn't want you playing Fortnite on iPhone Trump warns Apple over India: what it means for the next iPhone
