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Qualcomm says it plans on going toe-to-toe with Apple in the laptop chip manufacturing business. The company intends to do this by building the โbest ever processorโ โ one even superior to Appleโs M1. Qualcommโs CEO, Cristiano Amon disclosed this in an interview with Reuters.
โWe [need] to have the leading performance for a battery-powered deviceโ, Amon said. He added that his company is looking to make laptops 5G-capable.
Qualcomm’s Laptop Chip Masterplan
Not long ago, Qualcomm bought Nuvia, a start-up founded by ex-Apple chip designers. Amon hopes to leverage the skills of these ex-Apple engineers (now Qualcomm employees) to build the next big thing in laptop processors.
Already, Qualcomm has been hugely successful in the Android smartphone processor industry. The chipmakerโs signature product, the Snapdragon series, is a most sought-after processor that powers several A-list smartphones on the market today. Therefore, the companyโs decision to venture into the laptop chip supplier industry doesnโt exactly come as a surprise.
Appleโs M1: A Formidable Competitor

In 2020, Apple unveiled M1, an ARM-based chip designed for Mac PCs. The chip is known for its โindustry-leading performance, powerful features, and incredible efficiencyโ. Appleโs website states that M1 has the โworldโs best CPU performance per wattโ, โthe worldโs fastest integrated graphics in a PCโ and โthe worldโs fastest CPU core in low-power siliconโ. As a matter of fact, Appleโs M1 outperforms all Intel and AMD processors on the market.
This is the laptop chip Qualcomm is up against. So itโs safe to say Cristiano Amonโs plan is really ambitious. But the CEO believes a strong presence in China can help his company achieve its objective. “We will go big in China”, Amon said.
However, success in the smartphone chip industry doesnโt guarantee success in the laptop area. Too often, we’ve seen companies that are household names in one sector fail miserably in another. For example, Microsoft โ with all of its success โ performed horribly in the smartphone industry. And Google failed to establish a presence in the social media industry with Google+. So, ultimately, whether or not Qualcommโs big plan will see the light of day remains to be seen.