3rd generation Oryon processor: Qualcomm promises more performance and additional PC market share* 64 comments
Image: Qualcomm
As part of Investor Day, Qualcomm announced the third generation of Oryon processor cores. They are also expected to bring higher market shares. However, the previous forecasts were canceled, but few analysts, except a few analysts, believed in the 40-60% by 2027 mentioned by the CEO of Qualcomm.
* Strong growth turns out to be weaker
This is how the possible market share objectives are not only limited to 30 to 50 percent, but above all extended until 2029. Qualcomm thus buys itself approximately twice as much time to achieve the previously announced objectives and were already considered unrealistic in the industry. The lower threshold of 30 percent in 2029 is at least a value that doesn’t seem completely out of nowhere, because a lot can happen in five years.
It also now explicitly states that this applies to all “non-x86 AI laptops” – there aren’t many vendors here yet. It was recently expected that MediaTek or even Nvidia would join them from 2025; the two could quickly challenge Qualcomm in the non-x86 segment and advance the Arm versus x86 ecosystem together.
30-50% SAM on non-x86 AI laptops by 2029 (Image: Qualcomm)
In its forecast, Qualcomm now explicitly refers to the SAM, i.e. the “Serviceable Addressable Market”, which you can theoretically serve yourself. In the end, this is still not the definitive market share that will be achieved. This is what the SOM means, the “Serviceable Addressable Market”, which in turn is part of the SAM that the company actually wants to achieve. The big numbers are primarily about marketing. Qualcomm will not achieve “50 percent market share in the notebook segment”, as has recently been popularized. The expected sales of 4 billion US dollars in 2029 in the PC segment also show this, which means that it would therefore only be about one billion US dollars in sales of notebook solutions per quarter. For comparison: Intel earned 4.9 billion dollars in notebook chips alone in the last quarter, weak. As already mentioned, Qualcomm’s goal is to achieve double-digit market shares.
SAM is just one of many
$600 laptops with Qualcomm chips are coming
In order to gain market share, Qualcomm will push the solutions even deeper into the market, i.e. further reduce the prices. The series, which started as a high-end product, will also be available in $600 laptops in early 2025. At IFA, there was talk of solutions costing around $700 from next year; an eight-core processor or even six-core chips would probably be available in the future. According to Qualcomm’s CFO, solutions lower than the previous eight-core Snapdragon X Plus will follow “soon”.
Entry-level solutions are the center of attention
Third generation Oryon brings more performance
The next generation of laptop chips will deliver more performance and operate more efficiently than current solutions. Qualcomm bases this on Geekbench predictions. Qualcomm’s chip is already doing well in these disciplines. During the investor day, there was a preview of the 3rd generation Oryon processor. Oryon 2 as in the Snapdragon 8 Elite is therefore not intended for the PC, where we go directly from the first generation to the third generation. Oryon 3 is expected to hit the market in 2025; a similar schedule to this year was recently considered, i.e. close to Computex 2025 at the end of May.
Qualcomm hints at a new PC chip
Marc deciphers processors by testing their performance for gaming, content creation, and artificial intelligence.
