Arm in 2025: The PC will change forever! 🚀💻

Qualcomm’s launch of new Arm processors for Windows laptops in 2024 was arguably the most significant PC hardware announcement since the arrival of Intel’s 486 processors in 1989. Just as that line of CPUs ushered in the Intel-driven era of x86 dominance, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips have ushered in a new era of competition. 🚀

But 2024 was just a sneak peek. Qualcomm's Snapdragon unveiling was limited, focusing on a specific subset of premium, thin-and-light laptops that don't require discrete graphics. 2025 will be the year that shows us the true extent of Arm's PC innovation! 🎉

I spoke with two hardware analysts to gain insight into how Arm-powered PCs will continue to grow in the future.

Qualcomm chips will expand their reach

The launch of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite was bumpy, to say the least. Microsoft labeled these new Qualcomm-powered laptops as "PC Copilot+" and touted their AI performance, only to pull the headline feature at launch due to public backlash. After multiple delays, they're just now rolling out to Windows Insiders.

“I think the messaging fell apart in large part because Microsoft had the Recall problem,” says Leonard Lee, senior analyst and founder of Next Curve, who has decades of experience in technology, business strategy, product innovation, and market analysis.

On the hardware side, however, the Snapdragon X Elite has proven its worth with critics, analysts, and enthusiasts. Lee notes that Snapdragon improved the performance-per-watt ratio for Windows laptops, regardless of AI workloads. If you're looking for a laptop with great performance and battery life, these Snapdragon PCs are modern pioneers.

Anshel Sag, vice president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, echoed Lee and had special words for the Snapdragon X Plus chips, which are already available in $800 laptops like the Lenovo IdeaPad 5x 2-in-1. “I think they’re going to blow that octa-core chip away,” Sag says. “It’s powerful and delivers an experience that wasn’t possible at that price point.” 💰

While we're already seeing these cheaper Snapdragon chips in laptops, CES 2025 (in January) will likely be the platform from which laptop makers launch a new batch of competitively priced Snapdragon-powered machines.

The only thing still missing is a "flagship." Qualcomm is rumored to be working on a higher-performance Snapdragon X Elite chip, with up to 18 processor cores (current chips have up to 12). Whether we'll see such a chip in 2025 is hard to say, but not hard to imagine. 💭

Qualcomm's current hardware also lacks support for discrete GPUs, which excludes them from most work and gaming laptops. Adding support for discrete graphics could expand Snapdragon into new areas.

There's no doubt that more Qualcomm Snapdragon X hardware will appear in 2025. If there's one question, it's this: Will more companies enter the PC market with Arm?

MediaTek and Nvidia are obvious candidates. MediaTek already produces Arm chips for a wide variety of devices, including ChromeOS laptops. Nvidia also has experience producing Arm SoCs (such as Tegra) and uses Arm cores in its datacenter CPUs. Rumors suggest they have partnered to manufacture new Arm chips starting next year. 🤝

Sag notes that this partnership, if it materializes, could be complex. “I think the only way MediaTek could do it is if they work with Nvidia, so they don’t have to worry about graphics drivers.” He predicts that MediaTek could partner with Nvidia by licensing an RTX GPU, something they’ve previously done for their Dimensity Auto SoC (for autonomous vehicles).

Lee also believes this potential partnership will be difficult to manage. “Just because you're Nvidia and you're the GPU king doesn't mean you automatically win,” says Lee. “You need the CPU, the GPU, and now the NPU. I don't think MediaTek or Nvidia have any inherent advantage here compared to Qualcomm.”

And it's not just about Windows PCs. Sag thinks MediaTek's laptop presence remains even stronger with ChromeOS. "I think Google will basically make ChromeOS work like Android. And I think MediaTek will go after that," he says. He could be right, as sources indicate that Google is turning ChromeOS into Android and making Android a unified desktop operating system.

The threat of such a move by Google should not be underestimated. While Google's efforts to bring AI features to Chrome have received less public attention than Microsoft's push with Copilot+ PCs, they are not insignificant. Many users on the latest version of ChromeOS already have access to AI functions like Gemini, Google's own AI language model, which can be used for summarization, translation, and other tasks. 🧠

Personally, I think a revamped ChromeOS, powered by MediaTek chips (which tend to allow for lower prices) and packed with AI features already present in Pixel smartphones, could outflank Microsoft's clumsy attempt to add AI to Windows PCs. 💡

How will x86 PCs defend their turf?

2025 will likely see a boom in Arm-powered Windows and ChromeOS laptops, but that doesn't mean it's time to turn your back on x86.

On the contrary, the continued relevance of x86 is precisely what makes this new era of Windows different from the past three decades. PC hardware will no longer be dominated by a single company or a single instruction set, but will span multiple instruction sets and chip manufacturers.

“Intel and AMD have proven they can offer a competitive x86-based proposition,” Lee says. He notes that Intel’s new Lunar Lake chips and AMD’s new Ryzen AI line are highly competitive with Qualcomm in performance and battery life. Laptops like the Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro, which we reviewed with the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU, can exceed 20 hours of battery life, just like their Qualcomm-powered counterparts. 🔋

This competition will benefit you, the laptop buyer and enthusiast. It means more choices and lower prices. Sag says it should also benefit OEMs like Asus, Lenovo, and Dell.

“Complexity is a challenge, but OEMs are optimistic about how this will play out for them,” says Sag. “I’m seeing a level of silicon that’s never existed in the industry. And it’s great because I’m hearing about prototypes and concepts—things I never would have thought would happen—from OEMs I never would have expected.” 😍