It wasn’t just Apple’s entry into the market for Mac processors that shook the chip world upside down. Actually, the turnaround had already begun with the smartphone era, because Intel had not been able to convince with its own chips. Instead, the various manufacturers all rely on ARM architectures – which is now increasingly taking place in the computer market. At the end of 2021, Qualcomm announced that it wanted to take a similar path to Apple and develop desktop and notebook chips. Not only the goal is the same, there are also interesting parallels in the staff: Three former Apple chip experts (Gerard Williams III, Manu Gulati and John Bruno) are behind the project.

Qualcomm’s chip plans have been known for a long time
A few months ago, the Qualcomm CEO had already chosen the M1 as the product to be beaten, and now he spoke again in an interview. They want to offer the fastest CPUs on the entire market, said Cristiano Amon in an interview with CNET . Apple is to be thanked for how much the company stimulated the ARM market, including in the area of software development. Microsoft has also jumped on the bandwagon – which makes the timing perfect for Qualcomm. In any case, Qualcomm has set itself an ambitious goal for its own Nuvia chips. “We will beat the M2 and surpass Apple in the desktop sector,” is the confident announcement.

More competition, but Qualcomm still needs a lot of time
However, there is a small catch, because even if Qualcomm achieves the performance of the M2, Apple’s chip will be on the market in July 2022 – however, the first PCs with Qualcomm’s performance chips are not planned for the end of 2023 at the earliest. As already mentioned in our article from the beginning of May, Apple has probably already reached the M3, or at least several expansion stages of the M2. In any case, Qualcomm is bringing further movement to the market and exerting further pressure on Intel. It is not to be expected that normal PCs will also be working with ARM chips rather than x86 chips within a few years, but market shares will definitely be lost.