Qualcomm is reportedly preparing to raise Snapdragon X and Snapdragon X2 prices by about 10%. Qualcomm had an advantage over Intel and x86 chips because of its in-house Oryon cores. This allowed Qualcomm to finally take on the big names in the PC space, including Apple and Intel, but now those competitors are getting just as capable chips at lower prices, while also running cooler.
Qualcomm still has a clear performance advantage, as we saw when benchmarking Googlebooks last week. The Dell XPS Googlebook was running circles around the Lenovo Googlebook 15. But with this price increase, we may see more OEMs opt for Intel or AMD instead of Qualcomm.
Price increases started on October 1
According to the Economic Daily News, this price increase for the Snapdragon X and Snapdragon X2 series went into effect on October 1. While we don’t know the new prices, and Qualcomm will never disclose them, this is a meaningful price increase. PC makers are not only battling the incredible price increases in RAM, but also increasingly expensive processors.
This could also explain why Qualcomm decided not to launch the Snapdragon X3 this year; instead, it’s continuing to lean on the Snapdragon X2 Elite, launching new laptops like the Surface Pro at Snapdragon Summit last month.
To get ahead in the PC industry, Qualcomm relied on higher clock speeds. The Snapdragon X Elite tops out at 4.5GHz, and the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme tops out at 5GHz on an 18-core chip. That’s really pushed its performance numbers ahead of the competition.
Qualcomm also stuck with an older manufacturing process, which drove up the per-unit cost of its chips. Apple kept focusing on architectural improvements while keeping die size small to reduce manufacturing costs. Though both now use TSMC’s N2P 2nm process, Qualcomm hasn’t yet moved to 2nm on the Snapdragon X, only on the Snapdragon 8 Elite series.
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