[webdevver]

genuinely, what is the survival story for qualcomm entering the next decade?

- completely missed out on AI

- phones become commodity, push for complete vertical integration from apple, google

- squeezed by chinese soc vendors from 'below' (mediatek, unisoc)

they're cooked, right? there's no way out, surely.

[piltdownman]

They just won a significant case in its licensing battle with Arm, securing rights to use Oryon cores in Snapdragon chips. Add in a decent x86 to ARM translation layer, and you have the basis of the next generation of handheld gaming. If Valve or someone paired with them for the next Steamdeck style project, they'd dominate.

At the high-end they announced two new flagship processor platforms at its 2025 Snapdragon Summit. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 they claim to be the world’s fastest mobile SoC.

Outside of Snapdragon its basically 5G Telecoms atm - iPhone 17 Pro Max relies on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X80 Modem for 5G - 5G Edge solutions for RAN, presumably harnessing AI - Non-Terrestrial 5G Provisioning in their partnerships with Thales/Ericsson. - IoT and Wearables - presumably low power/footprint modems

[jabl]

> They just won a significant case in its licensing battle with Arm, securing rights to use Oryon cores in Snapdragon chips.

As an aside, wonder how this will impact Qualcomm's RISC-V plans? They were apparently working on some RISC-V cores, but I wonder whether that was just a play to put pressure on Arm, or are they still planning on bringing those out to market?

(The "Arduino UNO Q" that they're launching now is based on a Cortex A53. One would think if they're serious about RISC-V they would start with this kind of things, as in low-end stuff for tinkerers.)

[als0]

So they are using RISC-V already for some embedded cores. For application cores, they are participating in the RISC-V consortium to keep the pressure on ARM and also to be ready for the long game.

I do not expect to see Qualcomm made RISC-V application cores until Android or Windows is completely ported to it, which I think rules out the next several years.

[mrheosuper]

I don't see nothing will affect the RISCV stuff. The risc-v will be likely used in some fixed-function chip(like TPM or security core inside CPU, pretty sure they've done that)

[cogman10]

> If Valve or someone paired with them for the next Steamdeck style project, they'd dominate.

They have to fix their approach to Linux driver development. (and driver development in general).

Qualcomm likes to lob hardware to consumers while spending the minimal amount of time making sure the drivers to support that hardware actually works.

I couldn't imagine someone like Valve leaping at the opportunity to use them.

[webdevver]

>They just won a significant case in its licensing battle with Arm

did you notice how ARMs stock jumped 5% after that ruling? that tells you everything you need to know.

not to be reddity but reminds me of that scene from The Social Network, where Zuck's buddy couldn't udnerstand how the the record companies winning was actually a massive L.

all the court proved was its total irrelevance to market forces, thats all. ARM is in NVidia accelerators, in Apple phones, in things of actual relevance.

Where is qcom "in"? theyre competing in... laptops!? i could not think of a worse commodity to be in. low volume, no margins, no added value. NPUs? holy snakeoil. again, this edge inferencing that nobody cares about. theres not even a roadmap for anyone to care about it.

>next generation of handheld gaming. If Valve or someone paired with them for the next Steamdeck style project, they'd dominate.

yeah, a market of what, $50M? jeez louise.

>Outside of Snapdragon its basically 5G Telecoms atm

seems to be the only thing going for it.

[Moral_]

Quoting Arm stock prices is hilarious considering that there is only 10% float available to be traded and 95% of that 10% is owned by institutions already. That stock is so heavily manipulated so the big boys can make insane profits on options.

On the other topic

>>Outside of Snapdragon its basically 5G Telecoms atm

>seems to be the only thing going for it.

Did you guys forget the $4B a year in auto rev that they generate, they essentially captured the entire auto market from Nvidia and NXP.

[piltdownman]

Auto Rev is Snapdragon Digital Chassis based is it not? I presumed people were aware of the legacy Snapdragon stuff, but maybe not!

[turtlesdown11]

Thank goodness for that $4B a year. It will certainly keep the stock valued at a market cap of $182B.

[piltdownman]

So why on earth did ARM sue to stop their release and force a clean-sheet redesign? Other than SoftBank being Softbank.

//ARM’s CEO wrote in a contemporaneous internal message that the Nuvia ALA “had left a route to blow a hole in [ARM’s] revenue plan” because “Qualcomm already ha[d] a v9 architecture license” under its own ALA. That observation led him to vent that “I’m struggling not to be pissed that we set up a route for Qualcomm to collapse the payments to Arm,” which “feels like in our chess game we left ourselves very exposed.”

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/delawar...

Re: Handheld gaming - The dedicated Xbox gaming handheld was cancelled because AMD required a minimum of 10 million units in its contract. With Steam Deck only selling ~5 million units and ASUS ROG/Lenovo Legion only selling 1-2 million MS didn't want to take the risk.

Reduce that BOM, go with ARM, and realise there's an incumbent leaving the market, and you have a compelling argument for Qualcomm. Particularly given the Nintendo Switch 2 sold 1.6M units in June, the highest launch month unit sales for video game hardware in US history

[ACCount37]

Good luck getting anywhere close to Nintendo Switch sales with anything that's not Nintendo Switch.

Valve managing to land Steam Deck within 2 orders of magnitude from that? That was already an unlikely feat.

[piltdownman]

One of the main use-cases of the Steam Deck? Wii-U and Switch emulation!

Valve managing to land Steam Deck within 2 orders of magnitude on their first handheld hardware launch, without some of the largest exclusive gaming IP in the world, selling direct to consumer... represent salient arguments for its ability to compete at a far greater extent when on more equal terms.

[clarkmoreno]

facts brother!

[xphos]

I think the AI bit is overblown. Why does every large company have to do everything in technology, AI is horribly over valued in the market right now. The other issues are much more important as those are threats to Qcom's current profit method mostly MediaTek squeezing the lower tier market. It's unclear if Qcoms going to be able to dominate upper tier where they own like 60% of market share if they don't also compete at lower tier where MediaTek has been very successful

[quitit]

The honest answer is that they see AI interaction as being the next human to computer interface, one that will function much in the way that super-apps do today, with the benefit of accelerating the purchasing pathway.

In a way this mirrors how people opt for using apps even though a web version exists, because the apps are generally more performant.

I'd argue that ChatGPT is already there. The instant check out feature they've added, along with integrations was that crucial link between recommending and fulfilling a purchase. It turns ChatGPT into something that can very directly assist with typical "life stuff".

As examples: You're having a dinner party, it can set the menu, then buy the ingredients. At christmas, spend a few minutes talking about your kids and then it can make christmas gift suggestions and go and buy it for you, then do it again 12 months later.

Getting between the consumer and their purchases would be highly lucrative, it functionally replaces one of the core functions of advertising and retail.

[rebolek]

What a nightmare!

[Gud]

Why would I want any of this?

[ferguess_k]

"With the money they earn, they can buy more police and political power. Then they come after us. We have the unions and gambling, and they're the best things to have, but narcotics is the thing of the future. If we don't get a piece of that action, we risk everything we have. Not now, but in ten years".

-- Tom Hagen

[jsheard]

Apple's vertical integration is formidable but Google are still really struggling with their execution, their Tensor SOCs are consistently years behind Snapdragon in performance and efficiency even after their switch to TSMC this generation. Qualcomm is probably safe at the high end of the Android market for a while yet.

[cosmic_cheese]

The gap between Google’s and Apple’s SoCs is insane. Current Pixels bench at around a third of what current iPhones do.

Not that performance matters to all users, but with how much Pixels cost you have to ask yourself what it is you’re paying for. Even if you don’t care for Apple, for a little more you can get a competitor for a Snapdragon.

[zem]

as a pixel owner, i'm unfortunately paying for the operating system more than anything else. most other android phones are infested with unremovable bloatware and lack of update guarantees, and iOS is crippled by apple. I used maemo when I could, and now that I can't pixels are pretty much my only option for a decent phone.

[cogman10]

Exactly the reason I own a pixel.

Pixels get first class support by google in terms of software which means I can rock my phone for several generations before upgrading.

I've owned a 2, 6, and now 9. Even though the 9 is much faster than the 2 or 6, I've reached a point where that performance difference simply doesn't matter. I'm not being held back by the CPU in any real way. That leaves security, software, and battery life as the main reasons why I might decide to update my phone.

[zem]

same here, got six years out of a pixel 3 and hope to get another six out of my current pixel 9. if it hadn't been for the battery life degrading I might even have hung on to the 3 for another year or two.

[cosmic_cheese]

I have an Xperia as a secondary phone and test device which comes with relatively clean Android. Sony is wavering on the NA market unfortunately so I may not be able to replace it with another Sony when the time comes.

[selimthegrim]

Does this mean you won’t even be able to buy new unlocked ones on Amazon?

[sofixa]

Even the low cost Xiaomi and OnePlus models get you a few years (6 for the former, IIRC 4 for the latter) of Android support.

As for bloatware, any mobile OS comes with stuff included. I've used both a Xiaomi and a OnePlus device and neither felt too bad, bloat wise.

[sgerenser]

It's definitely not that bad for the Pixel 10. One source[0] shows Geekbench 6 scores of 3701 single core and 9460 multicore for iPhone 17 (maybe add 5% more on each on the iPhone 17 Pro). While the Tensor G5 in the Pixel 10 is at 2345 single/6581 multi. So around 63-70% of the speed of the latest iPhone. Still a pretty poor showing but a far cry from 1/3 the speed.

[0] https://www.tomsguide.com/phones/iphone-17-vs-pixel-10

[jsheard]

> with how much Pixels cost you have to ask yourself what it is you’re paying for.

The average consumer seems to be stuck on the same question, judging by Pixel's 3% market share.

[webdevver]

google is competing with a different offering. with a pixel you get google's ecosystem. apple is also not neccesarily top dog in performance (maybe they are - havne't checked lately), nobody buys an iphone because it ranks highly in benchmarks. thats some nerd nonsense that 0.1% of the audience seriously cares about.

for google, pushing 3rd parties out of the supply chain gives them a ton of security and stability concerning pricing and budgeting. its a smart long term move, and i think the industry is going to continue to push towards consolidation and in-housing.

[Certified]

Apple A series CPUs and now M series CPUs have consistently been top of the benchmarks in single core performance for most of the last decade. This even holds true when pitted against desktop Intel and AMD chips. For someone who works with workloads that struggle to be very multithreaded, I do watch this. I must be that 0.1% of the audience

[leoh]

>nobody buys an iphone because it ranks highly in benchmarks. thats some nerd nonsense that 0.1% of the audience seriously cares about.

This is not true at all. Performance matters because it enables exceptional battery life.

[Workaccount2]

Qualcomm is and will remain patent holding company. They have a crazy number patents for all manner of wireless communication, and they treat them like their golden geese.

[RobotToaster]

So they're basically going to become a patent troll, like IBM?

[zoobab]

They are a patent troll for a long time.

[fidotron]

Qualcomm are good at radios and associated signal processing. The rest is simply integrations around that.

[ac29]

Yeah, there are only a small handful of companies making radios for mobile networks that I am aware of - its really hard. Qualcomm, Samsung, Mediatek, Apple?

[userbinator]

There is also HiSilicon (Huawei), Unisoc (formerly Spreadtrum) also exists in the ultra-low-end segment formerly occupied by Mediatek, and then a bunch of miscellaneous ones like Leadcore, Nufront, and Rockchip.

[stefan_]

Buying random companies they have no use for like Arduino, they have firmly entered the Intel era.

[xyzzy_plugh]

I've been out of the hardware game a minute but Qualcomm was a great partner for helping you ship products. Everything about them sucks, but they will actually send engineers to your office. They always took bug reports seriously and pretty much always delivered patches. Also they always had ample samples, both in terms of dev boards and software. I know of several products that basically shipped the sample code with minimal modifications.

If I were a company trying to ship V1 of our first product, I would hands down pick Qualcomm. MediaTek et al are great for when you know what you're doing with minimal handholding.

I absolutely hated working with them, but at least they were a vendor you could work with. Perhaps the cheaper vendors have upped their game here but I wouldn't know.

[ACCount37]

I heard that Qualcomm can be decent to work with - if you are in a company the size of Qualcomm, or can dangle "500000 units to ship" in front of them like a carrot.

But "decent" is Qualcomm at its absolute best. And Qualcomm at its worst?

I'd rather chew down broken glass than work with Qualcomm.

[gimmeThaBeet]

I can add a minimal anecdote. I got some support from a couple engineers on a telecom project, and it wasn't even that big of a thing, but they were more than decent to work with. I did say to one guy, "you guys are a lot cooler to work with than some of the stuff you see in the news" and matter-of-fact he was just like "oh, yeah that's legal"

my vision of them is that the engineering side can be great to deal with when they want to be (and my personal experience is they want to be). but the other part of their business is like set the standard, and then enforce it.

[ACCount37]

To get to the engineers, you need to get through the viper pit that is the sales first.

The only time I have seen this incredible feat accomplished was in a company large enough that they had a department dedicated to dealing with other large companies.

[cosmicgadget]

At least they're up front about it? When I think of a vendor I think of sales taking your money and then being ghosted by support staff.

[mschuster91]

Qualcomm still are the only relevant ones in town who actually sell high performance ARM designs to third parties and have no political quarrels attached, there's a lot of money to be made in that game.

As you said there is competition from Mediatek, but who knows how long Mediatek has before the US government sanctions them to hell and beyond. Apple doesn't sell to third parties (no matter how much one might dream) and so does Google. Samsung I haven't ever seen used outside of their own phones and TVs.

The remainder is NVidia's Tegra lineup but other than automotive and the Nintendo Switch I haven't seen these in third party products either, I doubt they'll even take your calls if you are not coming in with millions of units sold of demand.

[yaro330]

Cooked how exactly? - Completely missed out on the LLM boom, just like everyone except nvidia. - Apple never used qcom SoCs, just their modems, Google doesn't even register on the radar of sales, their first foray into SoCs isn't great. - Idk where you get that, they still hold the entire market in their firm grasp and Nuvia stuff has been nothing but outstanding, it's just a shame that MS are cowards and dropped the Windows-on-Arm stuff again. - Google are partnering with them for the Android on PC projects.

I hope they provide better Linux support for the next gen PC grade chips.

[ivape]

Cooked hardware companies get bought into it seems. Intel is the most egregious example, but AMD is being circled by OpenAI now for 10%. Companies like Marvell and even hard drive companies are up due to how they fit into the AI pipeline.

[webdevver]

But intel being "cooked" was a massive psyop. how was intel ever "cooked", when they were still designing, taping out, and delivering massive quantities of CPUs to DCs and consumer products?

AMD briefly gave them a run for their money, but it was nowhere near the catastrophe that bulldozer was, where the company basically needed rescuing. For a brief moment, they weren't a monopolist - that's all that happened, right?

AMD being circled by OpenAI makes sense since AMD makes NVidia knockoffs. that's objectively useful. Harddrive company make sense for storing weights and generative content. Marvell is networking...

what does QCOm present here, that openai or the AI scene at large needs? the only bet is robotics - but why on earth would I put some washed-up adreno into a 40kg man-sized apparatus which would very comfortably fit a H100?

[BirAdam]

Intel was in danger because they went from having massive amounts of cash on hand to losing billions per quarter with no roadmap to retake the market in the face of competition from both AMD and ARM. They also didn't have competitive GPUs, they lost the automotive market, they lost the networking market outside of desktop/laptop WiFi, and they'd lost any potential market in handhelds/embedded ages ago. Intel is a company that is massively capital intensive, and they simply cannot afford to be in that position. Looking at the need for billions in investment while burning billions per quarter and no good pathway to profitability, investors leave and the company is forced to make dramatic cuts which furthers the death spiral.

[fred_is_fred]

I don't think OpenAI has any plans to buy AMD. That's just another moving paper around and we all get rich in the AI space - like the nVidia, OpenAI, Oracle circle of funding.

[bgnn]

just a correction: Mediatek is Taiwanese.