At CES 2025, Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon X platform scalable across form factors from laptops to tablets to mini-PCs. Jeff Fieldhack, Research Director at Counterpoint Research, had a quick chat with Alex Katouzian, Group GM for Mobile, Compute and XR at Qualcomm, to discuss the company's journey in the PC market, from early 8cx devices to the all-new Snapdragon X platform. Katouzian highlighted the importance of learning from past experiences, the strategic partnership with Microsoft, and the development of custom CPUs. He also touches on the future of AI PCs, including upcoming upgrades, key applications, and the role of on-device AI in enhancing user experience.

The Interview

Key takeaways from the discussion:

• Qualcomm entered the PC market in 2017 with the Snapdragon 8cx compute platform, which was also known as Windows on Snapdragon. This was a new space, very different from the smartphone market, with many learnings and subsequent challenges along the way.
• Acquiring NUVIA, a leading CPU design company, helped accelerate Qualcomm’s entrance into the PC space and overcome some of those early hurdles.
• Qualcomm first launched the high-end X Elite processor for a halo effect before scaling lower with the X Elite Plus & X (smaller core counts). This allows PC OEMs to scale from $500 to over $1,000 for a diversified lineup.
• During CES 2025, Qualcomm featured many interesting Snapdragon X Elite PC demos involving music applications and DJ hardware. These demos illustrated the compute power and unveiled new functionalities allowing the user to extract individual instruments audio on device and process the data much faster than previous solutions allowed.
• A key differentiator is standardized AI performance across Qualcomm’s lineup. Each SoC supports 45 NPU TOPS – ensuring the same AI experience across Qualcomm’s portfolio. With this effort, Qualcomm is attempting to democratize AI from low price points to high.

Analyst takeaways:

• Qualcomm is relatively new to the PC arena, but it has many years of expertise and learnings from the smartphone space. This includes developing some of the best-in-class AI experiences within audio, video, and connectivity.
• Like its smartphone SoCs, power management is best-in-class. The SoCs key specs and early performance benchmarks have been impressive vs the competition.
• With a 4nm system-on-chip architecture, its own 12-core Oryon CPU, and integrated Adreno GPU, the challenge is now breaking through within new PC sales channels which are vastly different than the smartphone universe.