If Snapdragon (or ARM players in general) wanted to challenge x86 and Apple dominance, do they need to compete in the exact same arena? Could they carve out a niche (example: ultra-efficient always-on machines) and then expand?
Exactly! That makes this move all the more interesting. The smartphone SoC market is saturated, and margins are shrinking. Laptops/PCs give Qualcomm a chance to leverage its IP in a higher-ASP segment. Expanding is logical, but the competitive bar is way higher.
“ARM chip” is a pretty broad umbrella. Apple’s M-series is based on the ARM ISA, the microarchitecture is Apple’s own design, and the SoCs are built with very different cache hierarchies, memory bandwidth, and custom accelerators. I was simply using Apple as an example of another big player.