It’s all kicking off between Intel and Qualcomm of late, as one of the new interim co-CEOs of Team Blue has taken a pointed swipe at Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs. As you might imagine, Qualcomm was quick to return fire – and in no uncertain terms.
Holthaus observed that Arm-based PCs, which are a major part of Microsoft’s drive with Copilot+ laptops, powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips, might not be all that popular: “If you look at the return rate for Arm PCs, you go talk to any retailer, their number one concern is, ‘Wow, I get a large percentage of these back,’ because you go to set them up, and the things that we just expect don’t work.”
So, the claim here is not that Arm PCs are less reliable on the hardware front, but that software compatibility is the main sticking point, and reason why some buyers are returning their devices.
Qualcomm then issued a statement in reply to this, published by CRN , which read: “Our devices continue to have greater than 4+ stars across consumer reviews and our products have received numerous accolades across the industry including awards from Fast Company, TechRadar, and many consumer publications. Our device return rates are within industry norm.”
In short – unsurprisingly – Qualcomm was having none of this, with the spokesperson making it clear that return rates of Snapdragon X laptops are within the expected ‘industry norm’ range for PCs.
Analysis: Laptop realities and airy assertions
The gloves are off, then, well and truly. Intel’s been having a turbulent time this year, of course, so is this just a case of lashing out, deflecting, and drawing attention to the weaknesses of rivals?
Not as such, because I can see Intel’s point here. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where an average consumer buys an Arm laptop, gets it home, then finds out a game doesn’t run on it – or an app runs, but rather sluggishly – then they get frustrated and take it back to the shop, complaining that it’s ‘faulty’ and doesn’t work properly. Not the hardware, but the way in which the device copes with the software out there in the Windows ecosystem.
The root issue here is that Arm is a different architecture to AMD and Intel’s x86 chips, and most Windows apps are written for the latter – these are by far the dominant CPUs out there, of course, in Windows land.
Software (and game) developers have to code their products for Arm to run natively and fully performant, and if an Arm incarnation doesn’t exist, Arm-based PCs run the x86 version but have to emulate it (if it can work at all, and some software – and games in particular – can be a non-starter). That emulation involves overheads which can drag down performance somewhat.
Apple made the move to Arm, and its own M-series silicon, with its Macs, using the Rosetta translation layer for emulation (now considerably refined with version 2). Also, a major motivating factor for developers was that Apple was transitioning fully to Arm – so software and game makers coding for macOS had to get on board, or be left behind.
In Microsoft’s case, its Prism emulation – the equivalent of Rosetta – is still in its early stages, so not as refined. But more importantly, Microsoft is offering Arm PCs as an alternative, while still mostly being behind x86 chips.
So, there’s less incentive for developers to code Arm-specific apps or games for what’s a relatively small niche of laptops right now – and if that native software doesn’t come, the mentioned compatibility issues are in play, and put people off buying Arm notebooks.
Essentially, it’s a tricky situation: without the software support in place, growing the hardware base is more difficult, and without the hardware out there, motivating devs to write that native software is an uphill struggle.
(Image credit: Future)
So, it’s easy to imagine the rocky road Arm on Windows is currently travelling (and has always been on, in fact). And it’s true that what Intel is claiming is plausible to an extent – and somewhat backed up anecdotally by what I’ve read online. But we’ve got to be very careful about drawing conclusions based on what are theories, ultimately, and what Intel is saying here is all too airy.
We aren’t given numbers, percentages, or facts by Intel – just an assertion that retailers are getting large quantities of Arm PCs returned. Qualcomm’s reply is vague too, merely mentioning industry norms, without setting us (or Intel) straight in terms of an actual figure here.
Also consider that there’s no doubting that Snapdragon X-based laptops are excellent in some cases – TechRadar’s current best laptop is one of these machines (Microsoft’s Surface Laptop) – despite the weaknesses of Windows on Arm, and they are definitely present.
Analyst firms are also predicting some major growth for Copilot+ PCs with Arm chips, something Intel is doubtless not going to mention. But those are just forecasts – and x86 growth is supposedly going to be strong, too, although the claim is that Arm-based PCs could own 30% of the laptop market by 2028.
I can’t tell the future, but what I can tell you is that it feels rather unseemly for Intel to be throwing stones at this point, at the close of a pretty terrible 2024 for the chip giant in many respects. Qualcomm might well be tempted to ask what the return rate is on Intel’s 13th and 14th-gen desktop CPUs, following an actual hardware fault across two entire generations of silicon, perhaps.
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