Qualcomm says it expects $4 billion in PC chip sales by 2029, as company gets traction beyond smartphones
Posted by TwelveSilverSwords@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 51 comments
x4nter@reddit
Wall Street seems to not have liked this. Down 6% this morning. I feel that this stock is way oversold.
auradragon1@reddit
Wallstreet, collectively, is really really bad at projecting long term. They're good at projecting quarter to quarter. That's it.
To project long-term, they actually need to understand the products, roadmaps, technology, theories, and they need to be on the ground in these industries.
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
Wallstreet is better at projecting long term than everyone on this sub
auradragon1@reddit
Not everyone. But on average, yes.
People on this sub are not motivated by projecting long-term. They're motivated by cool tech, gaming value, supporting their favorite tech companies.
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
Qualcomm themselves are projecting 4B rev in 2029 while intel does 30B. Plus their cpus are just going to be for light notebooks while amd/intel target entry, med, premium, workstation, servers etc.
Long term projections is next to impossible because of the amount of variables that come into play.
TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)
If so, that 4B may be a conservative projection. Note that Qualcomm isn't going to be the only ARM CPU vendor for PCs, starting from 2025. Nvidia, Mediatek and others will also make ARM chips for PCs.
NeroClaudius199907@reddit
You wouldn't believe who's projecting a 30% share. I can't wait for more people to realize that market share isn't just about the hardware itself.
Im going to predict hardware will reach a place where more performance doesn't really matter for the average consumers. All that will matter is how much volume can be supplied.
TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)
$4 billion for an entire year is about 1/4 what Intel makes in client revenue yearly. Meanwhile, Automotive is and will continue to be a big growth driver. Qualcomm is diversifying.
sixpointnineup@reddit
The market doesn't believe it though.
TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)
The market is irrational.
DerpSenpai@reddit
This means selling 20M laptop chips each year at an average price of 200$ each. If we increase average price to 300$, it means 13M units.
mach8mc@reddit
this prediction ignores the entry by nvidia and mediatek
Tradeoffer69@reddit
And further developments by already existing AMD and Intel.
auradragon1@reddit
Given what we've seen from Qualcomm's first gen X Elite and their Snapdragon 8, you don't think Qualcomm can get 11% of the laptop market in 4-5 years?
DerpSenpai@reddit
MTK will fight with lower margins so it will be a tough market to crack overall. That's why they are conservative
auradragon1@reddit
It's hard for AMD/Intel to fight with lower margins in the laptop world. Qualcomm's SoC is more area efficient. And compared to LNL, it's a lot cheaper to produce.
Qualcomm already sells their X Elite for half the price as Intel's chips based on leaked Dell documents.
auradragon1@reddit
Arguably, Qualcomm benefits more from Mediatek's entry than not.
DerpSenpai@reddit
No they don't. Because of Nvidia and MTK is why they are being cautious with revenue.
mach8mc@reddit
qc has not advantage in areas where there are no modems involved
TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)
11% is considerable.
Exurbain@reddit
Honestly if they capture the low end/Chromebook market that seems feasible? Not sure if sales for that sector have plateaued or cratered in the last few years though but there always seems to be pretty steady demand for glorified word processors for enterprise and educational markets.
ZigZagZor@reddit
What about the data center? What is stopping Qualcomm from making server CPUs? Everyone knows ARM neoverse cores are mediocre.
TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)
Qualcomm may have superior core IP, but that's not enough to be successful in the server market.
PastaPandaSimon@reddit
It's also very arguable as to whether they've got the superior core IP. It's the first time in a decade that they're using their own core, there are pros and cons to it as is, and there's no evidence that it'll continue being competitive against Intel's and AMD's coming designs, which are also x86.
psydroid@reddit
Let's assume Intel and AMD have the superior core IP and will be competitive against current and future designs from Qualcomm, Nvidia, Ampere, ARM, Apple and others and also that x86 is more desirable than any non-x86 ISA.
Why are these companies then wasting their time designing chips that aren't competitive and even worse why are customers spending money porting their workloads to and running them on those chips? Does that make any sense?
So there must be something compelling that causes developers and companies to invest in solutions that aren't built on platforms from Intel and AMD, or they wouldn't do it in the first place.
TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)
Yes, there's a reason why the hyperscalers (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) are building their own custom Server CPUs based on ARM cores.
ZigZagZor@reddit
Qualcomm doesn't need to make better cores than AMD and Intel. The role of cpu in AI and HPC is decreasing and shifting to custom accelerators. Nowadays a cpu just has to be good enough like in the Nvidia Grace Blackwell chip. Qualcomm just has to steal ARM's lunch and Qualcomm can easily do that.
RegularCircumstances@reddit
We already know what Gen 2 looks like. They can run 4.32GHz at standard yields (instead of 3.4GHz with the laptops and then 4GHz and 4.2GHz bins) for peak ST in smartphones.
Which is also possible because iso-performance it offers a 57% power improvement over Oryon V1, or up to 30% more performance at the same power.
Peaks at 7-8W, instead of 13-15W.
Lunar Lake and Oryon V1 were fairly similar in ST performance and ST performance/W except Lunar Lake had a much more costly implementation due to the absurd area they used for 4 P cores and all the cache, even on N3B.
V2 (in the 8 Elite only right now) shows already they can match LNL’s peak ST at about half the power (same as compared to Oryon V1) just by basic deduction.
V3 is what’s confirmed to be coming in the X Elite 2 and 8 Elite 2 this next fall/winter of 2025, which will be yet another performance/W improvement and peak performance improvement over Oryon V2.
I like Qualcomm’s odds.
trololololo2137@reddit
Why would anyone buy chips from Qualcomm when neoverse is good enough and most likely WAY cheaper? All hyperscalers already have their custom neoverse chips so going back to a third party makes no sense
animealt46@reddit
Server ARM has a lot of players already trying to find their place with the giant monster known as Nvidia pretty much guaranteed the big wins.
6950@reddit
That's about 60% of a quarter sale for Intel
battler624@reddit
or 10 bananas
LemonRigamarole@reddit
Those are some big bananas, gabongananas even.
noiserr@reddit
What happened to the 50% of PC sales in 5 years claim from not that long ago? https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1d7mrag/qualcomm_ceo_says_arm_taking_50_of_the_windows_pc/
chx_@reddit
Wasn't there a Digitimes report a few months back saying these thins don't sell what well?
constantlymat@reddit
My entire workflow works best on x86 but I am really jealous how much better the webcam looks on all those Qualcoom laptops.
They make my 2k Euro business laptop's webcam look really dated.
TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)
It is thanks to Qualcomm's expertise in making ISPs for mobile photography.
seatux@reddit
If that ISP works through external webcams, they can have a niche of being meeting machines.
Davester47@reddit
Is this a troll post or are you serious?
SherbertExisting3509@reddit
More competition is always good especially from large companies like MediaTek and Qualcomm. they will really turn the screws on Intel and AMD to produce more efficient and powerful chips.
Qualcomm and Mediatek need to help microsoft with running x86 code at close to full speed. native AVX-2 and eventually AVX-512 support is going to be important in helping with compatibility. There's also future x86 instructions like Intel's APX instructions (GPR 16-32) and AVX-10 that need to be emulated
TwelveSilverSwords@reddit (OP)
APX introduced 32 GPRs, something which ARM Aarch64 already has.
DerpSenpai@reddit
AVX512 support is not coming. Patents but they also dont need it as new Intel cpus also don't support AVX512
AVX 2 is in beta
vhailorx@reddit
I also expect $4Billion in revenue for myself in 2029, so I am also accepting investments!
Why should anyone believe Qualcomm over me? I think i could construct a colorable claim that Qualcomm's revenue is just as likely to go down with their ARM license on the brink of cancellation.
SherbertExisting3509@reddit
More competition is always good especially from large companies like MediaTek and Qualcomm. they will really turn the screws on Intel and AMD to produce more efficient and powerful chips.
djashjones@reddit
I can this happening, Loads of dumb people out there.
PAcMAcDO99@reddit
nothin wrong with an efficient arm laptop for those looking to just do some powerpoint slides and send emails
djashjones@reddit
The issue I have is the shitty software and more so the OS. I'm probably alone here but the reason we have no innovation is because the many spoil it for the few.
I can spend laptop money on a phone but web browsing is still no way near a desktop experience. Same with a tablet with a nice big screen.
democracywon2024@reddit
Yeah so what you're complaining about is easily solved in like literally 25 seconds but for whatever reason nobody wants to do it.
djashjones@reddit
I've given up on a decent windows tablet. Was there when the tablet edition was out and then when the Dell Venue's was popular and the Asus Transformers. The stylus was great, all passive
But since then I've closed the chapter on windows ever doing a decent tablet os. Heck, they can't even get sleep sorted out.
I got really excited when Asus brought out the padfone, where the phone docked into a tablet but that never took off.
So, I'll stick with whatever low/mid range Samsung phone with sd card until a device comes out with full linux support.
steinfg@reddit
2029 is so far away that those kind of prediction become really useless
steinfg@reddit
4 billion? Assuming a 300-500 dollar chip price, they expect OEMs to sell 8 to 13 million snapdragon laptops. I am not sure how feasable it is.