Why 2025 will be the year Arm dominates PCs

Qualcomm’s 2024 debut of new Arm processors for Windows laptops was arguably the most important PC hardware announcement since the introduction of Intel’s 486 processors in 1989. Just as that CPU line heralded an age of Intel-driven x86 dominance, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips have now taken us into a new era of competition.

But 2024 was only the preview. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon debut was limited, targeting a specific subset of premium, thin-and-light Windows laptops that don’t require discrete graphics.