Qualcomm picks bad time to pitch a $300 laptop platform

Systems

Systems based on Snapdragon C to target students, families, and small businesses

Chip giant Qualcomm is launching new Snapdragon silicon
aimed at entry-level laptops, right in the midst of a memory supply crunch that
will make it very difficult for any vendors to hit the target $300 starting price.

The San Diego-based biz is adding to its line-up of Arm-based
system-on-chip (SoC) processors with the Snapdragon C platform. This is designed to
power entry-tier laptops targeting buyers such as students, families, and small
businesses, with a starting price stated as “about $300 or
so.”

Qualcomm started its push into the Windows laptop market a
couple of years ago, with its Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus
chips. Many of these were priced around $600. It was aided by Microsoft, which was trying to promote the “Copilot+
PC” brand for Windows 11 systems that feature a built-in neural processor (NPU)
for AI tasks. 

The firm unveiled new additions, the
Snapdragon X2 Plus chips for budget and mainstream systems, at the CES
trade show earlier this year.

“With Snapdragon C, we’re now raising the bar of what
budget-conscious laptop buyers should expect,” said senior director of product
management Mandar Deshpande, promising all-day battery life, lag-free performance, and fanless, cool-running designs. 

Qualcomm is curiously tight-lipped about the chip’s specifications, declining to disclose CPU core count or GPU details. Deshpande confirmed only that the cores are a custom design based on the Kryo architecture from its smartphone chips rather than the Oryon cores used in its higher-end laptop silicon.

A full spec sheet is expected and may land as early as next week when vendor partners unveil products at Computex in Taipei.

Snapdragon C includes an integrated NPU, though Deshpande
said this “is not built to scale up to the Copilot+ requirements,” something budget buyers are unlikely to lose sleep over. 

They may, however, lose sleep over memory prices. DRAM component costs have more than quadrupled since this time last year, and some analysts predict entry-level systems could effectively disappear as a result.

“Because the price of memory is increasing so much,
vendors lose the ability to provide entry-level PCs – those below about
$500,” Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal told The Register.

On the $300 price point, Deshpande claimed that “everyone
is interested in buying laptops at this price.”

“There is a lot of momentum still in the lower tier price
points, given how things are turning out for the memories and everything. So
it’s a great opportunity for Qualcomm to bring all the great technology that we
have built for the Snapdragon X, and again make it a purpose-built platform for
the entry user.”

That said, Qualcomm doesn’t set the price of systems – the PC
makers do. Deshpande said that products from HP, Lenovo, and Acer will be “launching
soon,” and are expected to hit shelves later this year. ®