Speaking at the San Diego semiconductor analyst day in New York, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkop said that bringing the Snapdragon chip, currently popular in smartphones and tablets, to Windows 8 PCs will give it an edge against competitors and enable it to expand into markets where people want their computers to have similar features to their phones.
"What developers are looking for will be dominated by what's happening on the phone," said Mollenkopf. "The phone itself will be the center of attention for developers. And then they'll say how can they adapt that for the car and home. It's much easier to go after the market if you have leadership in smartphones."
One of the biggest issues that Qualcomm faces though, which could seriously influence many potential buyers of Snapdragon-powered Windows 8 PCs and notebooks, is that it won’t be able to run legacy applications, which includes browsers, security tools and office suites.
"We've been very clear since the very first CES demos and forward that the ARM product won't run any x86 applications," confirmed Windows Team boss Steven Sinofsky earlier this year.
Qualcomm doesn’t seem too concerned. The chip designer has predicted revenue growth right through to 2015 and cites emerging markets, where 3G connections will be rolled out over the next few years, to be a huge contributor to the success of its ARM-based chip.
