Qualcomm's New CEO Eyes Dominance in the Laptop Markets (reuters.com) 28
Qualcomm's new chief thinks that by next year his company will have just the chip for laptop makers wondering how they can compete with Apple, which last year introduced laptops using a custom-designed central processor chip that boasts longer battery life. From a report: Longtime processor suppliers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have no chips as energy efficient as Apple's. Qualcomm Chief Executive Cristiano Amon told Reuters on Thursday he believes his company can have the best chip on the market, with help from a team of chip architects who formerly worked on the Apple chip but now work at Qualcomm. In his first interview since taking the top job at San Diego, California-based Qualcomm, Amon also said the company is also counting on revenue growth from China to power its core smartphone chip business despite political tensions. "We will go big in China," he said, noting that U.S. sanctions on Huawei give Qualcomm an opportunity to generate a lot more revenue.
Mostly node advantage (Score:2)
Without node advantage the 4800U vs M1 comparison would not look very good for Apple.
Apple has massive margins with which to buy node advantage, Qualcomm does not.
I will wait until Intel trashes it (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
More importantly, Qualcomm's options for a mainstream OS are Windoze and ChromeOS. Trying to push ChromeOS up the value chain seems an impossible task. And well, good luck with pushing Windoze off of x86.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about the latter. Microsoft has been salivating about prospect of a locked down OS with their own store as primary source of paid software for quite a while now.
Re: (Score:2)
Compelling Products? (Score:2)
It would be nice if the CEO was eyeing compelling products that would sell well rather than eyeing dominance. Dominance doesn't sound like it's in my interests. Making great products does.
Re: (Score:2)
And people believe the world started 4000 years ago.
Belief doesn't make it true.
Re: (Score:2)
It won't work anyway. There isn't really any advantage to ARM in laptops, except maybe cost at the very low end.
Yeah you might get another few hours battery life, but most people don't care when x86 is faster and still gets 15+ hours.
There just isn't really anything compelling to Qualcomm's offering at that level, outside of niche models.
Re: (Score:2)
At the low end, there's Celerons and Pentium Silvers based on the underwhelming Atom architecture - garbage specs that have basically been unchanged for a decade - e.g. 4/128GB with a 1366x768 screen for $AU549
Thus I could see Snapdragon smashing the 'cheap' market for Windows laptops, provided Microsoft's claims about emulating x86 are realistic.
But yeah, performance will still be comparable with a flagship phone. And based on their planned obsolescence re: android releases, I can't imagine choosing to run
IP Transference. (Score:2)
Qualcomm Chief Executive Cristiano Amon told Reuters on Thursday he believes his company can have the best chip on the market, with help from a team of chip architects who formerly worked on the Apple chip but now work at Qualcomm.
Surprised Apple isn't on the warpath about this.
Re: (Score:2)
None of them were under noncompete?
Re: (Score:2)
California banned noncompete clauses.
Reminder: Intel Qualcomm Apple Lawsuit (Score:2)
This is just a contextual reminder that there was an antitrust suit against Qualcomm. It is funny to hear the company boasting how they will have dominance so shortly after an antitrust suit. It's like the mob boss who successfully defends himself in court against murder charges, then walks out of the courtroom boasting [begin mobster voice] "And let that be a message to any rats out there! You better lay low cuz I'm coming for you!"
I am all for it (Score:2)
I am all for it as long as these laptops can run a BSD without proprietary firmware.
I say "a BSD" because then it will work with all OSs.
Finally ARM is going mainstream. It took 30+ years (Score:2)
I remember when the Archimedes was competing against the Amiga back in 89/90 and the Amiga won and then was beaten by an even worse architecture, x86 / PC.
Finally this will be overturned. I'm looking forward to notable increases in energy efficiency on portable computers. 10+ hours will be normal soon. Nice.
That Apple had to lead this one once again is of no surprise.
x86 is on the way out, after 35 years. I won't shed too many tears.
Re: (Score:2)
I remember when the Archimedes was competing against the Amiga back in 89/90 and the Amiga won and then was beaten by an even worse architecture, x86 / PC.
Finally this will be overturned. I'm looking forward to notable increases in energy efficiency on portable computers. 10+ hours will be normal soon. Nice.
That Apple had to lead this one once again is of no surprise.
x86 is on the way out, after 35 years. I won't shed too many tears.
The Amiga never competed in the home computer space. The IBM PC was released ins 1981, the XT was released in 1983, and the Amiga wasn't released until 1985. It was more of the C-64 vs the PC and the PC had won by the time the Amiga rolled around. Most people bought the Amiga as game consoles. Though, it was used in some video production for TV because of the advanced graphics. For graphics, it was way ahead of its time.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Apple had to lead this one once again"? Apple has n
Re: (Score:2)
I remember when the Archimedes was competing against the Amiga back in 89/90 and the Amiga won and then was beaten by an even worse architecture, x86 / PC.
I was around back then, stuck in the x86 upgrade cycle, buying a new home computer every 2-3 years for about $2500 each cycle, and really wanted to buy an Amiga. Why didn't I?
1) Not only my company, but the entire office world by then had settled on the IBM clones.
2) See #1
Given my druthers back then I'd have bought an Amiga, it was a great machine. But when work settled on the x86 family, and, oh yeah, our product was x86 based and I'd recently moved from writing assembly code to C for it. If I h
Re: (Score:3)
Immediate failure. (Score:3)
Unless Qualcomm is prepared to make some big changes, this will be an immediate failure. Qualcomm has a business culture that believes in keeping information secret, so absolutely everything is behind an NDA. All their drivers are completely closed source and it doesn't help that they purposefully integrate wireless chipsets into their processors. Naturally they will be met with competition and it's going to be a competition of who sucks less at putting out chips that don't require complete redesigns. I have no doubt that this CEO thinks the laptop market is like the smartphone market and they are going to find out how wrong they are.
Re: (Score:2)
What you said can equally apply to Apple apart from the last sentence as IMHO, Tim Cook believes the opposite (phone and tablet can replace the laptop).
IMHO, QC doesn't have the clout that Apple has when it comes to getting leading-edge chip fabrication slots so good luck competing with the M1 and its successors in the near future.
Yes, QC has some SOC's but compared to what Apple is shipping now, they suck in almost every way you care to look at it.
That said, I wish them luck and frankly, any serious compet
Risky (Score:1)
RISC-V . . .
Re: (Score:2)
Don't poke the TDSers. There's a chance they may actually slowly regenerate their sanity from that particular derangement and be able to actually tolerate dissenting views after a while.
Sure... if you offer drivers... (Score:1)
And not just Windows ones.
No, you can't treat laptops like phone. People actually have to get work done on them, you know?