Qualcomm's new CEO reveals plans to challenge Apple and eventually dominate the laptop market in the coming years

Apple is coming on strong with its power-efficient M chips designed in-house, to which Intel and AMD do not really have an answer right now. However, things are starting to heat up for the laptop market once again, as Qualcomm appears to be ready to take on Apple in the energy-efficient sector. Not only that, Qualcomm is planning to right out dominate the laptop market in the coming years, and the recent Nuvia acquisition should help further this strategy.

Qualcomm’s new ambitions are fueled by the daring visions of its new CEO Cristiano Amon, who revealed in a recent Reuters interview that he is ready to challenge Apple’s supremacy with the help of the chip architects at Nuvia. In this regard, Qualcomm aims at designing its own processors, without having to rely on longtime partner ARM too much. Nuvia was founded by ex-Apple chip architects that previously helped design the Apple M1 chips, so Qualcomm is certainly getting valuable know-how out of its recent acquisition.

The plan is to start selling the first Nuvia-based laptop processors some time in 2022, but Qualcomm is still open to ARM licensing, especially if ARM manages to produce a better laptop chip. There are no current plans to enter the desktop or server markets, yet Qualcomm is contemplating the possibility of licensing Nuvia’s designs to cloud computing companies, thus becoming a direct competitor to Nvidia. The two longtime partners have not exactly been on the best of terms ever since Nvidia started acquiring ARM.

Amon also touched on a few more important aspects. First of all, Qualcomm is expecting considerable revenue growth from Huawei’s downfall in the Chinese market, as Android handset customers in that region are gradually converting Huawei users. Then, the company will need to figure out how to keep Apple as a customer. Right now, Apple is using Qualcomm’s 5G modems in the iPhone handsets, but the Cupertino giant is already taking steps to produce its own modems. On top of this, Qualcomm needs to improve its market presence if it really wants to become the top laptop processor maker, and Amon has already started a new branding program to help with the market awareness.

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