Qualcomm's Computex 2025 Keynote: AI-Powered PCs and Future Chip Announcements

Everything Qualcomm Announced at Its Computex 2025 Keynote in 19 Minutes

Cristiano Amon discussed all the progress Qualcomm has made in building up its ecosystem for Arm-based Windows PCs and how it sees AI impacting user workloads. Qualcomm may be best known for powering smartphones, but at the Computex trade show in Taiwan, the US chip vendor came to talk about Windows PCs and its play for a market that's long been dominated by Intel and AMD. "We're going to be in the PC market forever," said Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon. In a keynote, Amon detailed the company's progress over the past year since it made a major push to sell Snapdragon X-powered Windows laptops. "We've very happy with the traction so far," he said. "We have now over 85 plus [PC] designs that have launched or are in development." The goal is to release 100+ product models by next year, giving consumers more choice for their next laptop purchases. In a shot at Intel and AMD, Amon also said Qualcomm entered the Windows PC business after Microsoft came to the company with a "desire to restore the performance and innovation leadership to the Windows ecosystem." One of Amon's major announcements was that Qualcomm plans on expanding its Windows laptop focus to businesses and enterprises. He's also betting that artificial intelligence, including on-device AI, will become so important to users that the technology will act like an operating system, rather than merely as a software tool or application. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips were designed to outperform rival silicon from Intel, AMD, and even Apple in terms of both performance, on-device AI workloads, and battery life. Still, one key challenge facing Arm-based laptops is software compatibility since existing Windows programs were built for x86 chips from Intel and AMD, rather than Qualcomm processors. But in his keynote, Amon highlighted the surge in native Windows apps built for Arm-based chips. "We have 1,400 games that are running and optimized on Snapdragon. And we're working with all the top global gaming studios," he said, adding that Fortnite is on the way too. Amon also noted: "93% of the users' time using those devices are now on native experiences." The remaining time is spent using an emulator to run x86 Windows apps. Qualcomm and its partners plan on showing off some of their upcoming Snapdragon Windows laptops at Computex. So stay tuned for our coverage.

Qualcomm's next big Snapdragon PC chip lands in September

It might have been May in Computex, but Qualcomm is already setting the stage for the next Snapdragons to arrive this fall. In terms of chips, Qualcomm didn't really have anything to announce at Computex 2025. That will have to wait until the Snapdragon Summit, which takes place at the end of September. "Nobody expected Qualcomm, the cellular company, to have the leading performance on an SOC for a laptop in the PC space," Cristiano Amon, chief executive of Qualcomm, in a keynote address at Computex. "We're going to do that again, and it's going to be even bigger." "You're going to see the next thing that we've been working on, the next chip for PC, and we're going to provide another breakthrough in performance," Amon added. "I promise you, you will be impressed." Amon used his Computex presentation to laud the success of the Snapdragon platform, which has enjoyed stellar reviews, including from PCWorld, and won me over. Over 85 different PCs now feature members of the Snapdragon X platform, and Amon said over 100 should be in users' hands by next year. To its credit, Qualcomm has moved quickly to shore up any holes in what it offers. App compatibility has been a concern, but Qualcomm seems to have mostly solved that problem. Growth in native apps have grown by three times, Amon said, and user time in native experiences has increased by 93 percent. Over 50 features take advantage of the Snapdragon's NPU, which has forged close ties with Microsoft in rolling out new Windows features. Qualcomm representatives have indicated that they are attacking Intel hard in retail and in the consumer space, placing kiosks in key retailers and launching a number of commercials. Qualcomm is pushing the fact that it delivers about the same performance running on battery and while plugged in, while the performance of Intel's Core Ultra drops substantially while on battery. (Our own tests of Intel's Core Ultra "Lunar Lake" chips bear that out.) Qualcomm has a weaker case to be made regarding games, but it's addressing that issue, too. Amon reiterated that Fortnite is coming to Snapdragon PCs, along with Epic's Easy Anti-Cheat. He also showed off a surprisingly smooth gameplay video of Kingdom Come II: Deliverance, though it was impossible to tell what graphics settings or resolution the game was being played back on. In all, Amon claimed that over 1,400 games are running on Snapdragon. Qualcomm's Amon also spent considerable time talking about agentic AI, and about how a shift to that model would benefit the Snapdragon platform and its NPU. Microsoft has begun talking up the concept, sending out autonomous AIs, or agents, to pursue specific tasks without user control or direction. Finally, Amon pledged that Qualcomm and its Snapdragon platform have another trick up their sleeve: targeting the data center, and the premium revenues that commands.

Qualcomm gambled on repeating its own ads at Computex, but did it pay off?

As predicted, Qualcomm's Computex Keynote focused more on AI and AI-powered features on the Windows on Arm ecosystem rather than new announcements. Qualcomm is turning 40 this year, but as CEO Cristiano Amon stated, "it's a new Qualcomm," thanks to the company's investment in computing. Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon X series at Computex last year, but despite that timeline, Qualcomm's Computex presence did not revolve around chip announcements. Essentially: Qualcomm spent the entire 60 minute keynote dodging around the rumors of the second Snapdragon X Series chip generation to instead focus on their often-repeated performance claims, new systems, and Windows on Arm ecosystem updates. At a rather slim Computex for computing news, this could have been a moment for Qualcomm to shine with the second gen of it's Arm chips. Instead the company chose to gamble and focus on its partnerships with various manufacturers including Microsoft. But, did Qualcomm's gamble pay off? Qualcomm now has 1,400 games optimized for Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite. The company showed footage of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II on a Snapdragon X Elite system, though its uncertain whether the game will play smoothly across all of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series. Qualcomm showcased a lot of early gaming performance on the Snapdragon X Elite chipset on custom hardware, running on 80W systems that were never released to the public. Considering that history, it's hard to take Qualcomm's announcements at face value. Qualcomm and Epic Games will also be bringing Fortnite to Windows on Arm, which makes sense considering Qualcomm announced Snapdragon support for Epic Games Online Easy Anti-Cheat back in March. Qualcomm has reached 9% market share in the laptop market, thanks to a large portfolio of devices, including newly launched computes like the new Acer Aspire 14 and 16 AI, HP OmniBook 5, and new Microsoft Surface Pro 11-inch and Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch. Amon also shared statistics on Snapdragon's performance compared to Intel's Core Ultra 7 processor. But this is a skewed comparison from the jump. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite is a 12-core chipset while the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V is a mid-range 8-core CPU. And some of the comparisons were calculated on specific workloads like DaVinci Resolve's SuperScale FHD to 4K upscaling technology. Amon also repeated the claim that Snapdragon has "leading performance on an SoC in the laptop ecosystem." While this was true during the Snapdragon X Elite launch cycle, it has been overturned by recent launches from AMD, Apple, and Intel. Qualcomm has also expanded its portfolio of applications to include the top 200 most-used Windows apps into the Windows on Arm ecosystem. Part of this is thanks to Microsoft's new Prism emulation software which helps alleviate the key pain-point of Windows on Arm. However, there are still limits to Prism emulation and the Windows on Arm ecosystem. After all, what are those 200 applications? And are they actually the most-used apps? Qualcomm makes this claim based on data from Microsoft that was collected by snapshots of aggregated app usage data as of August 2024 on Copilot+ PCs. Of course, the problem with that data is that in August 2024, only Snapdragon X systems were in the Copilot+ ecosystem. AMD and Intel's AI PC chips didn't get rolled into Copilot+ until the end of 2024. So it's a bit of a skewed sample set. As always with Qualcomm's claims, Amon's claims are technically correct, but the real context is always in the details Qualcomm doesn't share. That said, Qualcomm has put in some serious work to fill out the Windows on Arm ecosystem. Just over a year ago, the Windows on Arm software ecosystem was almost unusably bare. That is no longer the case. But if you need a highly specialized application, it may not run on Windows on Arm, even emulated. Some key examples are the Autodesk suite, Parsec, and Adobe DreamWeaver and Substance 3DStager. In fact, despite Qualcomm's partnership with Adobe, the only applications that run natively on Snapdragon are Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom. Other applications like Illustrator and After Effects are expected to make it onto Snapdragon platforms, but are still not available through emulation yet. Qualcomm deserves recognition for the work done to build up an ecosystem. But it will still be years before Windows on Arm can even come close to the level of app-support you find on x86 systems. Cristiano took questions during the keynote from audience submissions and had them spoken aloud by a Snapdragon AI PC. So these questions ranged from AI for business to a hybrid future that combines computing, AI, automotive, and mobile ecosystems. Because these questions were collected from the whole keynote audience including Qualcomm staff, guests, OEM partners, and Computex industry attendees, many fed straight into Qualcomm's usual marketing stance about Snapdragon X Series performance and Qualcomm's view of a hybrid future. The most interesting statement from Amon during this segment was "I'm very bullish about smart glasses" and the future of AR and how it will evolve with AI PCs and better smartphones to augment our lives. Amon also took questions from press and analysts after the keynote to expand on Qualcomm's portfolio from data center to DragonWing to robotics. "Robotics is natural to Qualcomm," Amon said. Claiming robotics will be a big market for Qualcomm similar to the automotive market. As robots require a high degree of performance and strong battery life, and "that's our DNA." As for the future of the Oryon CPU cores behind the Snapdragon X Series processors, Amon would only enthuse "the CPU team is very busy," and that those interested in the future of Qualcomm's computing portfolio should "come to Snapdragon Summit, you're going to like what you're going to see." Qualcomm sees the future of computing as a hybrid environment between computers and smartphones, where one is an extension of the other. This view of the future colors everything Amon and Qualcomm's OEM partners discussed at Computex. However, is it an accurate view of the future? You can already access your smartphone data on your laptop in the Windows and macOS ecosystems. While there are differences in functionality, with some combinations working better than others. But phone to computer communication has been in the works for years now. In fact, I distinctly remember crashing my 2010 MacBook Pro by adding macOS X Mavericks on it to control my iPhone from my laptop back in 2013. While Amon is also bullish about on-device AI features with Snapdragon, Apple, AMD, Nvidia, and Intel are also pushing the same development. So it's hardly a unique feature to Snapdragon systems. To support this dream, Qualcomm is entering the commercial and data center spaces in the future. As for the highly anticipated Snapdragon X Elite Gen 2, it seems Qualcomm is holding all details on that chip for Snapdragon Summit in the fall.

No new chips from Qualcomm at Computex 2025, wait September

Qualcomm's CEO, Cristiano Amon, took the stage at Computex 2025, but unlike last year's massive launch of Snapdragon X Elite laptop processors, this year's keynote was more subdued, with no new chip announcements. Instead, Amon discussed the progress Qualcomm has made with the Snapdragon platform over the past year, highlighting the rapid growth in apps supported on the Snapdragon X Elite platform and the now 1,400+ games playable on Snapdragon laptops. Amon showcased Qualcomm's influence in the Windows computing market, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and executives from Asus and HP making appearances. The keynote included some competitive jabs at Intel and Apple, as well as discussions on Qualcomm's AI hardware. Amon also demonstrated a laptop that used AI to ask him questions in a robotic voice. Although there were no new chip announcements at Computex, a teaser at the end of the keynote hinted at Qualcomm's next move. Amon revealed that the company will hold its Snapdragon Summit on September 23 in Hawaii, where it is expected to unveil the next generation of Snapdragon X systems-on-a-chip (SoCs). Amon teased that "the revolution continues" and promised that attendees would be impressed. Qualcomm beats estimates but warns of turbulence ahead The next-gen SoCs are likely to be called Snapdragon X2, with expected variants including X2 Elite and X2 Plus for premium and mid-range laptops. A more basic Snapdragon X2 chip may follow later, offering a budget-friendly option. There's also speculation about a potential 2nd-gen Snapdragon X Elite chip for desktops, which could further expand Qualcomm's presence in the market. Qualcomm has already made a significant impact with its Snapdragon X series, holding around 9% of the integrated processor market in the US and top 5 European markets as of last quarter. This achievement is notable given the intense competition from established players like Intel and AMD.

As AI becomes the new UI, Snapdragon X Series is the heart of your PC

It's been a year since devices powered by the groundbreaking Snapdragon X Series Platforms were first introduced. And today, Snapdragon is at the heart of your PC. Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon delivered a keynote speech at COMPUTEX 2025 to highlight the remarkable momentum since we redefined the PC landscape and to preview what's still to come. This has been one of our most impactful launches in 40 years of innovation and we are proud that performance leadership has been restored to the Windows ecosystem. This is just the beginning of a long journey we have with Microsoft. "Microsoft and Qualcomm have a long history of partnership and innovation, and over the past year, we've delivered an entirely new class of Windows PCs built for AI. Copilot+ PCs are transforming productivity and creativity across working life," said Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO and Chairman, during our keynote. We've partnered with the top PC innovators to bring new personal computing experiences to more users, with multi-day battery life, performance plus efficiency to accelerate productivity and creativity with AI. We already have more than 85 designs launched or in development across every price tier, with more than 100 designs targeted to be commercialized next year. As AI becomes more pervasive, it is about bringing the entire ecosystem together. Snapdragon is unlocking on-device, agentic AI experiences to fuel productivity and creativity across real-world use cases for consumers and enterprises. We now have more than 750 applications running on Snapdragon X Series, including the 200 top global apps. Additionally, there are more than 1,400 games running on the platform, and we're excited that Fortnite is coming to Snapdragon X Elite later this year. As AI accelerates at the edge, we're powering devices for the age of AI, across not only PCs, but also mobile, smart glasses, auto and more. After establishing performance and multi-day battery life as table stakes, we're now going to change the mindset of what AI is. It is becoming the new UI. Snapdragon X Series is ready for tomorrow's experiences, and we will continue to play a central role in delivering the intelligent future. Stay tuned for Snapdragon Summit this fall to hear how Snapdragon X Series will once again change the PC landscape. While we've been focusing on on-device AI, we believe in a hybrid AI future. When we have something unique and disruptive, there is room for Qualcomm -- not only at the edge, but also in the data center. Announced at Computex, our advanced custom CPU technology with NVIDIA's full-stack AI platform brings powerful, efficient intelligence to data center infrastructure. More exciting announcements and developments are on the horizon. Watch Cristiano's full keynote from Computex 2025

Computex 2025: Everything Qualcomm announced including Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 SoC

Qualcomm and NVIDIA team up to bring custom CPU technology to AI data centers. In a keynote speech during Computex 2025, Qualcomm demonstrated a number of innovations, including AI-powered computing, edge intelligence, and next-generation PC experiences. Additionally, the company has announced that its Snapdragon Summit will take place in Hawaii from September 23 to 25. The company also confirmed the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 SoC, updated the Snapdragon X Series and Windows Copilot+ PCs, and expanded into data centres with NVIDIA. Here are all of Qualcomm's announcements. The company announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2, its next-generation mobile platform aimed at improving performance, power efficiency, and AI processing on smartphones and other portable devices. It is specifically designed for advanced on-device AI tasks and integrates the NPU architecture. It may debut later this year. The company gave an update on the Snapdragon X series' adoption in the Windows ecosystem after a year of its release. More than 85 designs from top PC manufacturers are currently supported by the company, and more than 100 devices are anticipated by 2026, according to CEO Cristiano Amon. Battery performance and thermal efficiency are important features of these PCs, which are designed for AI-based workloads and run on Windows Copilot+. READ: GIGABYTE at COMPUTEX 2025: A Whole Lot of AI and a Little Bit of Everything Else Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, joined the keynote and mentioned how the X Series helped bring AI-native Windows experiences. Snapdragon X platforms now support 1,400 games and more than 750 apps, including creative and productivity tools. Notably, later this year, Snapdragon X Elite will support Fortnite. Additionally, the business announced a collaboration with Advantech to incorporate the Dragonwing platform into a variety of edge AI devices, such as AI cameras, smart panels, and embedded modules. The QCS6490, IQ8, and IQ9 chipsets are used in a variety of industrial applications. Additionally, this will concentrate on developer tools, integrating Advantech's EdgeAI SDK with Qualcomm's enablement platforms to facilitate low-code and no-code model development for edge AI systems. The company has also stated that it is expanding its focus beyond edge computing by collaborating with NVIDIA to bring its custom CPU technology into data centres.