For Qualcomm, laptops under ARM have not met the expected commercial success due to the excessively high prices charged by manufacturers.
In Qualcomm’s eyes, if ARM-powered laptops have not achieved the expected commercial success, this is largely due to the poor value proposition, these devices being much less powerful than PCs under Intel SoC. For the American founder, we must add to that serious compatibility problems, and above all far too high prices charged by manufacturers.
Moreover, Qualcomm directly attributes this failure of the platform to OEMs who demand more $ 1,000 for new ARM laptops. “One of the points on which we were not satisfied with the first devices was the inadequate price ”, said Miguel Nunes, senior director of product management at Qualcomm in the columns of Golem.de.
Qualcomm denounces the too high prices of PCs under ARM
Despite everything, the manager acknowledges that the pricing was left to the discretion of the equipment manufacturers. At any rate, the prices of ARM chips like the Snapdragon 8cx remain roughly the same as those of Intel chips, except that the performance gap is significant. Knowing this, consumers are not fooled.
Why go for a $ 1,500 Microsoft Surface Pro X, when it is possible to go for a much better performance Intel laptop for a much lower price. Devices with a Snapdragon 8cx continue to cost more than average. The HP Elite Folio can reach 2000 €. Certainly, the situation is slowly starting to change, with more reasonably priced ARM devices like the Samsung Galaxy Book Go. Launched in June 2021, these two laptops are trading around $ 400.
As a reminder, Nvidia had positioned itself to buy AMR. Finally, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) considered that the takeover transaction would be anti-competitive. For the federal institution, this acquisition could harm competition by giving Nvidia access to competitively sensitive information of ARM licensees. Now the operation has been delayed for several months, and negotiations are expected to continue until August 9, 2022.
Source: Mspoweruser