At its latest investor day, Qualcomm hinted on the third generation of its Oryon CPU cores. According to German outlet ComputerBase.de (machine translated), it seems that the Oryon 2 will be skipping PCs, and will only be used in the Snapdragon 8 Elite chips. The successor to the Snapdragon X Plus and Elite chips will be powered by the Oryon 3 and is targeted to be launched around the time of Computex 2025, which coincides with the Dell leak showing Qualcomm’s roadmap for its Arm-based CPUs.
The second-generation Oryon chips were tested “using a Qualcomm reference design on Android 15,” and are expected to exceed the first-generation Oryon chip by 30% in performance and 57% in efficiency. However, the company hasn’t released any information yet about the Oryon 3-powered next-generation Arm CPU chips, so we’ll have to wait for additional information from the company.
In the meantime, we expect the company to deliver more affordable Snapdragon X-powered laptops in early 2025. The products were initially said to be sub-$1,000 and eventually it’s been revealed that these laptops would hit $700. At Investor Day 2024, the floor price for the Qualcomm’s Arm-powered devices is now $600, making it more attainable for more people.
This move to lower the barrier to entry for Snapdragon-powered computers will likely help the company to push into the PC market, especially as it targets $4 billion in PC sales by 2029. The company’s strategy since 2021 has been to use its advantage in the smartphone ecosystem and expand it to other markets like PCs and automobiles.
In line with this, it expects revenue for automotive chip sales to hit $8 billion, especially as 80% of this amount, or $6.4 billion has already been secured in contracts. The company also envisions $4 billion in revenue in industrial chips, while VR will generate at least $2 billion. Qualcomm also expects an additional $4 billion in tablets and wireless headphones sales.
All these sales targets will bring it an additional $22 billion annually by 2029. Although this might seem like a lofty target, Intel, which is currently struggling with its $1.6 billion loss from its data center and foundry business, was still able to secure $29 billion in PC chip sales for 2023.
These numbers show Qualcomm’s positive outlook in the semiconductor industry. However, some experts doubt the company’s ability to get close to their targets, much more hit them. Nevertheless, it’s good for the chip manufacturer to have these lofty goals, as it means that they’ll likely produce highly competitive chips that could push the leading edge of personal computing even further.
