Qualcomm aims for dominance in laptop market

With the introduction of its M1-based laptops like the MacBook Air M1, Apple demonstrated that it's perfectly possible to create compelling computers based on the Arm ecosystem. Shortly after the launch of the first Apple Silicon chips, Qualcomm bought Nuvia and revealed its plan to create Arm-based laptop processors.

Qualcomm believes it can be the best

Qualcomm Chief Executive Cristiano Amon hyped up the firm's chip development plans to Reuters. In an interview, the new boss boasted that Qualcomm has everything to create the best chip on the market. Amon explained Qualcomm will adopt lessons it learned from the smartphone market, it will pair 5G connectivity with custom-designed processor cores.

The first Nuvia-based laptop chips from Qualcomm are expected next year. These chips will focus on providing a great combination of both high performance and high battery life. It will be interesting to see how they compete with Apple's next-gen laptops. With the M1 SoC, Apple has already set the bar very high. Later this year, we can expect more powerful offerings from Apple as well as a refresh of the MacBook Air.

At this point, Qualcomm has no interest in going after the datacenter market. The goal of the in-house Arm-based designs will be to compete in the laptop market, but if there's interest, Qualcomm will license the design to cloud computing companies.

Amon said Qualcomm has no plans to build its own products to enter the other big market for CPUs - data centers for cloud computing companies. But it will license Nuvia's designs to cloud computing companies that want to build their own chips, which could put it in competition with parts of Arm.

"We are more than willing to leverage the Nuvia CPU assets to partner with companies that are interested as they build their data center solutions," Amon said.