14 DAY TRIAL // Qualcomm and Apple haven’t been exactly the best friends lately, though the two companies eventually settled their legal disputes and agreed to work together on powering 5G capabilities on the iPhone 12 and future models.
But there’s another market sector Qualcomm is closely keeping an eye on: the ARM push that both Microsoft and Apple are super committed to.
While Microsoft is pushing hard for Snapdragon on Windows chips, Apple has embraced the Apple Silicon with its very own M1 processor powering a new generation of devices.
Speaking with AnandTech, Alex Katouzian, Qualcomm’s SVP and GM of the mobile, compute and infrastructure business, explains what Apple does right now is reiterating a strategy the chip maker has been insisting on for several years already.
“People say, imitation is the best form of flattery. Look at look what happened with the [Apple] M1. Their product pitch is almost a duplicate of what we've been saying for the past two or three years,” he said.
“It's almost exactly the same; like I have an SoC, and you don't have to have anything on the outside, everything's integrated, multimedia capability, AI capability, camera capability, you know, great battery life, the whole thing.”
The Microsoft – Qualcomm collaboration
Going forward, Apple becoming so committed to ARM chips is the living proof Qualcomm’s strategy in the long term is the right one, Katouzian explains.
“We are 100% dedicated to this market. I think Microsoft is 100% dedicated to us, to make sure that this is going to happen. And I think that, you have a $2 trillion company coming into the market and saying, this is the way to go. We're only $170 billion, but you know, it helps to have a $2 trillion company saying, "Yeah, this is the right thing to do". And guess what, we're inundated with calls to make sure that this is going to happen. So we're 100% behind this stuff,” he said.
Microsoft has already launched two generations of ARM chips, namely the SQ1 and SQ2, both of them developed in partnership with Qualcomm, and the company is now believed to be working on more ARM devices that would join the Surface lineup in the coming years.