Ahead of AMD and Intel, Qualcomm is leading the charge to offer a new wave of Windows laptops powered by ARM chips. The chipmaker, best known for its SoCs in Android smartphones, is currently the only one leading the charge. It’s a win-win situation for Qualcomm, which benefits from support from Microsoft and major manufacturers who are rushing to buy its new Snapdragon X, Elite and Plus chips. The situation is such that it could reshuffle the cards in the field of Windows laptops, a few years after the appearance of Apple Silicon chips in Macs (and iPads).
The renewed interest in Windows on ARM and Copilot+ PCs does not leave another chip specialist indifferent. According to Reuters, Taiwanese giant MediaTek is developing for computers running Windows. The chip would arrive “late next year,” following the end of the exclusivity agreement between Qualcomm and Microsoft. This is a rumor about MediaTek’s interest in the PC world after rumors that evoke a collaboration with Nvidia around a chip with GPUs from the green giants.
Riding the wave of AI-based PCs, MediaTek’s goal
For the time being, no one knows if Microsoft has approved MediaTek’s chip for the Copilot+ program. To fall into this category, the processor must be able to perform more than 40 TOPS (more than 40,000 billion operations per second). The autonomy of the machine must exceed one day, and the PC must access the most advanced AI models. At the time of its release, however, we can imagine that MediaTek will seek Microsoft’s approval. The manufacturer’s efforts would also be good news for the Redmond company that is trying to promote Windows on ARM, to the point of complicating the task of Intel or AMD.
As part of Computex 2024, the ARM CEO spoke about his company’s big ambitions for the PC market. According to René Hass, ARM can capture more than 50% of the Windows computer market within five years. “Arm’s market share in Windows — I really think in the next five years it could be more than 50 percent,” he told Reuters in an interview. An ambition shared by Cristiano Amon, since the CEO of Qualcomm explains that Snapdragon chips could capture between 40 and 60% of PC sales within three years. One thing is for sure, the industry is about to experience a lot of change, and the democratization of AI technologies is cause for optimism.
