Seeking To ‘Revolutionize The PC,’ Qualcomm Says Partners Are ‘Essential’

In an interview with CRN, Qualcomm Global Channel Chief Kyle Houser says partners are ‘essential’ to aiding the chip designer in its goal to ‘revolutionize the PC’ and break up the Intel-AMD duopoly with the new Snapdragon X processors for Copilot+ laptops hitting the market now.

Qualcomm is hoping to break up the Intel-AMD duopoly and “revolutionize the PC” with this week’s release of its Snapdragon X processors, and the chip designer’s global channel chief said partners are “essential” to making that happen.

Kyle Houser, head of global commercial channel at Qualcomm, told CRN that the company has designed a channel program that aims to help partners scale the new category of AI PCs with Snapdragon X, which powers more than 20 new laptops from HP Inc., Dell Technologies, Lenovo and other OEMs as part of Microsoft’s new Copilot+ initiative.

[Related: 12 Big Nvidia, Intel And AMD Announcements At Computex 2024]

“We think we have an opportunity to help educate, train, enable, develop, innovate and create in true partnership and, ultimately, scale laptops powered by Snapdragon X series at the end of the day,” he said in a May interview ahead of the processor line’s launch.

While the San Diego-based company has been known in large part for designing processors for Android-based smartphones such as Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series, it has held a tiny footprint in the PC processor market since entering the space in 2018.

But with the support of Microsoft and major OEMs, Qualcomm is hoping to change that with its new processors, which consist of the premium-focused Snapdragon X Elite chips and the mainstream-focused Snapdragon X Plus chips.

The company has said that Snapdragon X chips offer all-day battery life and outperform competing chips from Intel and AMD across several critical areas, including neural processing unit (NPU) performance for AI workloads and CPU performance-per-watt.

“From a technology standpoint, we think that end users deserve a processing experience that’s best in class. We think they deserve industry-leading battery life and industry-leading on-device AI. And so when we look at that, Snapdragon [X] excellently delivers on this promise to revolutionize the PC, which creates a business opportunity for our channel partners,” said Houser, who previously worked in go-to-market strategy and marketing for Mac computers with enterprise customers and channel partners at Apple.

Like the Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen 8040 processors that have helped fuel the initial wave of AI PCs to land over the past several months, the Snapdragon X chips consist of a CPU, GPU and NPU to support a variety of workloads, including AI-focused ones.

But one of the big differences is that the Snapdragon X’s NPU is capable of up to 45 tera operations per second, which made it the first chip line to meet Microsoft’s requirements for the Copilot+ PCs releasing this week with new AI capabilities, which include the now-delayed Recall feature. AMD is expected to launch the Ryzen AI 300 series next month for Copilot+ PCs while Intel plans to release Lunar Lake chips for the category later this year.

Another major difference is that Snapdragon X is a custom processor design based on the Arm instruction set architecture, similar to Apple’s M-series system-on-chips for Macs, and it stems from the company’s $1.4 billion acquisition of Nuvia in 2021.

While Arm could be seen as a major leap for businesses that have long relied on x86 processors from Intel or AMD, Houser said Qualcomm has made big investments alongside Microsoft to enable native Arm support for many popular applications on Windows.

“What I can confidently say is Snapdragon compute supports the popular apps that users expect from their PC, with many of the top apps optimized to run natively on our platform,” Houser said, citing Microsoft Office, Zoom, Google Chrome and McAfee as examples.

A senior executive at a major solution provider told CRN that her company has developed a “significant” partnership with Qualcomm to sell Snapdragon X-based PCs, and much of that has come from the chip designer listening to understand the channel’s needs.

“What I appreciate about how they approached it was they came and said, ‘We understand that the channel is really important for us to get into this space, but that’s newer to us. So could you give us feedback in terms of what a great channel program or partnership looks like?’ And they hired and put the right people in place that had levels of experience with it. So the relationship has definitely evolved to being pretty relevant and significant to Insight now,” said Megan Amdahl, senior vice president of client experience and North America COO at Chandler, Ariz.-based Insight Enterprises.

Part of what impressed Amdahl has been the level of investment Qualcomm has made in ensuring that nearly all Windows applications work on Snapdragon X processors, whether that’s through native Arm support or x86 emulation.

“That definitely caught my attention from a relationship perspective with [how] they spent so much time on testing the emulation layer and getting the applications to be effective,” said Amdahl, whose company is No. 17 on CRN’s 2024 Solution Provider 500 list.

What follows is a transcript of CRN’s interview with Houser, who talked about important considerations that went into building the Snapdragon X partner program, how Qualcomm differentiates from Intel and AMD and software compatibility for Snapdragon X-based PCs.

How did you get started working in the channel for Qualcomm?

A few years back, Qualcomm made an acquisition [of Nuvia in 2021] to help further our leadership in PCs. During that time, we thought about how we bring this to life, and obviously, the channel and a channel program is essential to that in the PC space. And we saw an opportunity to bring innovation here, and our first call was into the channel.

And so we actively looked for those partners that wanted to bring that same level of innovation and enthusiasm to the PC space, and we evaluated how we can best service those customers in terms of how they like to buy today, which is through that channel. And so, over the past few years, we’ve made incredible progress here. And I can tell you from a channel and partner program standpoint, we’re in a really strong position going into launch. And it’s been something that we’ve really enjoyed building.

As you set out to build this Snapdragon X partner program, what did you feel were the most important elements for it to have?

From our perspective, I think it needs to be nimble and flexible. And I will tell you that Qualcomm really stands out well in this area where we’re still newer to this channel concept in terms of PCs, and we’ve been able to design the program with that at the core: be nimble, be flexible, bring the resources and benefits that our partners need to be successful. And I think that that approach has allowed us to be a little bit more creative than existing players who’ve been in this PC channel space for a long time.

And then we’re also working throughout our program with our ecosystem partners to ensure that not only we’re showing up to support [the channel], but that those channel partners are getting the support from the likes of OEMs and others in the ecosystem, both from a business and technical standpoint. And then at the end of the day, making sure it has the right incentives in place to create a win-win scenario for all of us.

What would you say are the main resources and benefits that partners get from being part of the program?

The bottom line is we’re equipping our channels with people, processes and programs to help them scale this new category of PC we’re all reading about. And so that’s where we think we have an opportunity to help educate, train, enable, develop, innovate and create in true partnership and, ultimately, scale laptops powered by Snapdragon X Series at the end of the day.

How would you say the incentives you’re offering weigh against what Intel and AMD are doing?

I actually look at how we size up in the market in a couple of areas, one being our technology, and two being how we work with partners.

So the reason we’re getting into this space is we think that it’s primed for disruption. Our long history in mobile and auto lend themselves and make us well-placed to bring the necessary transformation to the PC. And so from a technology standpoint, we think that end users deserve a processing experience that’s best in class. We think they deserve industry-leading battery life and industry-leading on-device AI. And so when we look at that, Snapdragon excellently delivers on this promise to revolutionize the PC, which creates a business opportunity for our channel partners. That’s part one.

From a partner standpoint, we look at certain capabilities: services, segmentation differentiation based on the strengths of their business—again, that ties into the flexibility—and we’re intentional about how we are aligning our technology to those partner strengths. … So it really is a flexible and nimble approach, partner by partner, and our intentional focus through all of this is to make sure that the customer at the end of the day buying from the channel is well-positioned to be successful on our platform, and the partners are there to help them.

For those who think, ‘I might as well just use Intel or AMD because it’s x86,’ what do you tell people who are not completely up to date with what Qualcomm is doing in software enablement?

We know it’s critical, and we have a very intentional focus to help our customers bring devices to market, and in this it’s customers being the OEMs. And so you’re going to hear more and more specific details from us and our partners across the ecosystem in the coming months.

But what I can confidently say is Snapdragon compute supports the popular apps that users expect from their PC, with many of the top apps optimized to run natively on our platform. And so when you think about that, with the incredible collaboration we have from ISVs [independent software vendors], developers, top apps across all of the categories that matter most—productivity, security, manageability, creative applications—are native. And then these include things like Google Chrome, Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, or Fresco, Dropbox, Zoom, McAfee. And so users can expect that seamless experience with their Office suite, chatting on a videoconference or editing in Photoshop.

So we have more and more coming out and a growing catalog of commercial software solutions to showcase for Snapdragon PCs. But nonetheless, Qualcomm and our friends at Microsoft remain committed to the developers and to having the resources available to help address app compatibility issues should they arise.

Is there a way you can quantify the ISV engagement efforts?

As you may have seen last year, we launched Dev Kit with Microsoft. What we can say is we’ve seen exponential growth in the number of developers that are developing on that platform and on the Arm 64 architecture, which lends itself to Snapdragon. That’s going to continue to grow. It is continuing to grow, and in the coming months there will be more numbers that we’re able to share about that.

What is Qualcomm’s vision of the AI PC, and what will make Snapdragon X the best platform for it?

Qualcomm has been a big believer in AI for many years. I mentioned some of our other businesses earlier—automotive, mobile—where over a decade’s worth of innovation from the AI standpoint have gone into those products. And so taking that expertise and experience and expanding it into our ambitions with PC creates an opportunity. If you think about what I said about the end-user experience earlier, they want better performance. They want better battery life. They want to be more productive on their laptop. Some of those things are hard to do concurrently on existing platforms.

But when you take our expertise with mobile, and you combine that with the industry-leading on-device AI performance that Snapdragon X series brings, you start to be able to empower those users to have a better performant, more intelligent, more power-efficient platform in their hands. And so when we think about that from a Qualcomm standpoint, having that dedicated NPU is critical to some of the workflows that we’ll hear more about soon—some that exist today and then some that don’t yet exist—in the future from the ISV community.

How does Qualcomm stack up from a performance perspective or even an efficiency perspective against competitors?

You can look at any one of those things individually, but I think where we really stand out is when you look at … them concurrently. I think when you look at the performance that we’re able to deliver—on par or better to the competition at half or a third of the power—and then you’re able to offload some of those CPU- or GPU-intensive work tasks to the NPU for AI experiences, that story gets even better.

That’s also one of the things that has drawn a lot of interest from our partner community because they talk to their customers every day, and they hear the challenges around battery life and this new hybrid, mobile, remote workforce that has normalized. Partners hear those challenges from their customers and are always looking to bring innovation and a solve for their customers’ problems. They see that opportunity based on our performance, our power efficiency and our AI capabilities together.

From a partner perspective, how do you plan to create preference in the channel for Qualcomm?

I think a lot of our partner community is still working through and iterating on their broader AI strategy. Qualcomm has been at this for over a decade from an AI standpoint, building it into our products, and so bringing that thought leadership and helping to solve complex problems related to this emerging technology trend together, hand in hand, is something that I know we appreciate, and I think our partners appreciate from what I hear. So that’s point one.

The second point with these partners is there’s a lot of excitement. As one partner put it to me, this is one of the most exciting things to happen to the PC in over 20 years. And I think that we’re at this inflection point in the market where customers have experienced and used alternative compute platforms and seen that they can have power and efficiency together in terms of battery life, and then they’re also looking at how they future-proof their workforce for AI capabilities. And so I think with the customer conversations that are happening with the partners, the thought leadership experience and expertise that our team can provide, that marries up really nicely with the thought leadership and experience of our channel partners to develop a cohesive go to market and ultimately a scenario where everybody benefits.

Is the program considered invite-only now?

From my perspective, we’re having lots of partner conversations. I would say we always invite the conversation. We are very interested in partners that bring value around the platform. And we are exploring and talking to them region by region. And it does vary region by region in terms of how we’re thinking about our partnerships.

Are there any particular areas you’re looking to fill now, either in terms of region or partner capability?

I think that a lot of partners are on this transformational journey themselves, as the technologies they’re selling have evolved at a pace that will never go slower than today but much faster than the past. And so it’s those partners that are innovating in new ways themselves and bringing new solutions to our customers. It’s partners that want to be flexible and nimble with us because I think they’re looking for new ways of doing business. And then it’s partners that can really put the customer at the center and work with us through that flexible, nimble approach to come up with new ways to transform the PC industry.

What’s your message to partners who may be wondering if Qualcomm’s interest in the PC market is a long-term commitment?

The acquisition we made to further our PC efforts, that demonstrates a substantial long-term commitment to this category, and I think you’re seeing that come to life with [Snapdragon] X Elite and X Plus. I will also say that we have not entered, exited and re-entered. We have been learning and working with our OEM customers. We’ve been working with our channel community to make sure that our customers are going to have a great experience with this. And you’re seeing us show up in more ways in this space because we really have something special that has caught the market’s attention, particularly the channel community, and we continue to build this business, we continue to build our product portfolio and we’re going to continue to show up in more spaces in the PC.