Qualcomm Inc yesterday said that Lenovo Group (聯想), HP Inc and Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) are to unveil Windows 10 laptops powered by its latest Snapdragon 835 chip by the end of this year, as the US firm seeks to challenge Intel Corp in the market for PC chips.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon ARM-based system-on-chip (SoC) family is the mainstream in the smartphone world, with cutting-edge smartphones such as Sony’s Xpria XZ Premium and Samsung Electronics Co’s Galaxy S8 powered by Snapdragon 835.
The San Diego-based chipmaker wants to bring those chips to PCs in collaboration with Microsoft Corp.
Windows PCs usually run on Intel’s x86 series of chips.
More names of PC makers planning to sell Windows 10 laptops running on Snapdragon 835 are to be released, Qualcomm Technologies Inc global product marketing division vice president Don Maguire told reporters in Taipei.
TARGET MARKET
Qualcomm Technologies is a fully owned subsidiary of Qualcomm.
The target market will be slim models and two-in-one laptops, which are the growth areas of the PC sector, Maguire said.
The expansion might be a move by Qualcomm to counteract Intel’s mobile chip business, which is Qualcomm’s main business.
Intel started making its own wireless modem chips last year.
Intel received orders from Apple Inc last year.
Some iPhone 7 models contain Intel chips instead of Qualcomm’s.
Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 835 SoC with an integrated Snapdragon X16 Gigabit LTE modem enables mobile devices to run at peak download speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, the company said.
‘POWER BENEFITS’
The chipmaker said that the Snapdragon 835 SoC offers 50 percent better power efficiency compared with chips from its competitors, allowing PC batteries to last more than 24 hours per charge.
Snapdragon 835 is the world’s first commercially announced 10 nanometer SoC, it said.
“Today’s PC users want solutions that provide longer battery life and the ability to connect anytime, anywhere, while also being lighter and more portable than any other laptop currently available,” Lenovo vice president Jeff Meredith said in a statement.
New PCs powered by Qualcomm chips would support all Windows applications, including Microsoft Office, Qualcomm and Microsoft said.
To avoid a flop similar to that of Windows RT in 2012, most programs would also run seamlessly using an emulation of the x86 PC architecture, the companies said.
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