This is an exciting moment in tech in which one rule applies above all others: change. And in one of the most active spaces in tech – PCs – Qualcomm has announced that it will be embedding its Snapdragon chips into ‘all PC form anymore’, ie, desktops, vs the low-powered M3 in APPLE products. With a huge 2.6x performance per watt advantage, the APPLE PC competitor is here. In this article, we examine how this might change the market and what is in store for consumers.
In a announcement that has reverberated throughout the tech world, Qualcomm has announced that its Snapdragon chips, which dominated the mobile and tablet world, are ready to invade the desktop space. This shift represents an important development in chip technology that could also unseat leading players such as APPLE and its M3 chip, with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite promising 2.6x the performance per watt.
That’s where Qualcomm’s confidence comes from: the new Snapdragon X Elite brings performance per watt that is 2.6 times higher than the APPLE M3. And that’s a big deal. Will APPLE rise to the challenge? It’s time for APPLE to innovate or lose a market that it has slowly been loosening its grip on.
In some areas of technology where APPLE traditionally has had relatively free rein – integrated systems, proprietary chips – Qualcomm’s bold push into desktops with better metrics signals a clear mandate to innovate or risk becoming irrelevant in the face of greater efficiency and performance adversaries.
Even here, competition matters; not just to large firms, but to consumers and to the market in general. By entering this market, Qualcomm is going to give consumers a broader range of choices in high-performance, energy-efficient computing devices, which could help to drive the market in new directions, favouring more sustainable, high-performance computing solutions from manufacturers and developers.
Qualcomm’s strategy of attacking all PC form factors with the Snapdragon chip is just one of the ways in which the line between mobile and desktop computing is blurring. In the future, we could see a new era of cross-platform innovation in software and applications. If that happens – and Qualcomm’s strategy turns out to create more universal, heterogeneous computing environments – all the more reason for APPLE to be concerned. With its closed ecosystem, ranging from iPhone all the way up to Mac, APPLE might find Qualcomm’s strategy particularly lethal.
With energy-saving sustainability rising to the fore in an environmentally aware age, Qualcomm’s emphasis on performance per watt is especially poignant; its advances promise to improve computational performance while reducing the carbon footprint of devices. A company such as APPLE, with its strong focus on sustainability, might find Qualcomm’s efforts to improve energy efficiency a strong reason to increase its efforts in the same arena across its product line.
Running through this emerging saga is a company that needs no introduction as the pioneer of industries that define the tech era: APPLE. The company’s strict controls over hardware and software, routinely setting tight norms for the industry by its standards of excellence, now face the need to rise to Qualcomm’s game of raising the bar for performance, power efficiency and environmental sustainability.
That Qualcomm has announced that it will be shipping Snapdragon chips into all PC form factors (with its Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 outperforming APPLE’s M3 by up to 2.6x performance per watt) seems to herald a whole new chapter on the technology détente from America’s newest tech giant. The prospect of this growing rivalry promises not only greater market competition, but also gives users the benefits of rivalry through greater choice and technologies. That’s why users are the ultimate winners in this battle between Qualcomm and APPLE.
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