MediaTek Is Entering The PC Market Once Qualcomm-Microsoft Exclusivity Deal Ends

Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek has long been regarded as the second fiddle against the smartphone chipmaking giant Qualcomm, and with its arch-rival now beginning to make inroads to the Windows-on-Arm PC market, the company wants a piece of that pie too.

MediaTek Bringing The Fight To Windows PCs

Reuters reported that MediaTek is currently preparing an Arm-based SoC to rival Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X series in the Windows-on-Arm market, the latter of which is busy competing against the likes of Intel and AMD from the x86 market, plus Apple’s M-series SoCs from the Mac side of the laptop realm.

However, there is one small problem. Back in 2016, Qualcomm and Microsoft has signed a long-term exclusivity deal that guarantees all Windows-on-Arm machines will be powered by Qualcomm’s chips (hence the likes of Snapdragon 8cx in the years prior), and that is exactly why all Windows-on-Arm laptops today (with Copilot+ PC designation) are all Snapdragon-powered.

The good news is, that deal is ending soon, according to Arm’s CEO Rene Haas. Once the agreement expires this year, this opens the doors for other chipmakers, namely MediaTek and NVIDIA, to start developing chips for this segment. Of course, while both Intel and AMD are longstanding x86 chipmakers, there’s nothing stopping both from developing an Arm-based processor at some point in the future (AMD notably had the K12 project before it was shelved).

MediaTek does have one trick up its sleeve: NVIDIA. The GPU maker (or rather, AI company has it wants you to believe these days) is drowning in lots of cash thanks to AI boom, and it has the intention to expand into the CPU space beyond what it currently offers, which is just a very small lineup of Tegra SoCs. In fact, both companies were said to be teaming up to design a gaming handheld processor, as well as smartphone GPUs.

Source: Tom’s Hardware

Pokdepinion: Once a processor duopoly in the Windows market will soon turn into a multi-way fight. Let’s see what the future has in store for us.