Currently, the $999 Microsoft Surface Laptop is the cheapest way to buy a Windows machine running a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chip, with all the possible battery life benefits (and caveats) that come with it. But by 2025, they’ll be even cheaper — Qualcomm now says they’ll hit the $700 mark next year.
Qualcomm CEO and President Cristiano Amon said in the company’s third-quarter earnings report: “Looking forward to 2025, in addition to new design achievements, our X-Series product roadmap will also expand to low retail price to a $700 PC without compromising NPU performance.
Qualcomm has yet to release any sales or financial figures for its first wave of Snapdragon X Elite and Copilot Plus PC. Currently, the company only deals in mobile phones, automobiles, and IoT as products.
Amon said that more PC products will be released at IFA starting on the first weekend of September, and he believes that Qualcomm will become “one of the top chip suppliers” for artificial intelligence PCs in the future.
“We expect PCs to be the next biggest driver of diversification for the company,” he said, though he expected the business to be “slow and steady as the market transforms.” He said some Snapdragon X PCs are already sold out.
In addition to its chip business, Qualcomm also makes a lot of money by licensing technology to other companies. The company mentioned on the earnings call that two unnamed major Chinese OEMs have now signed long-term agreements, similar to the current licensing arrangement with Apple that is valid until 2027.
Amon also said that the company has its own custom CPU that will be announced at the Snapdragon Summit (to be held in late October) and will be launched in phones by the end of this year or early 2025 – it will be part of the company’s next generation Flagship Snapdragon 8 mobile phone chip.
