Qualcomm estimates that it will sell PC CPUs worth $4 billion annually by 2029, which is roughly what AMD sold in the year 2023.

Qualcomm held its annual investor's day yesterday, and with it came news that the company expects PC processors to sell no less than $4 Billion annually by 2029. (CNBC).

If that sounds like a large number, it is. AMD's latest full-year earnings figures show that the company brought in $4.7 billion for its "clients segment" during the most recent quarter. This segment consists primarily of PC processors, excluding PC graphics cards and console chips.

AMD has since then admittedly improved its game, netting $1.9billion in sales of client PCs alone during the last quarter. Qualcomm's claims put it in the same ballpark with AMD for client PC sales. This would be a remarkable achievement, considering Qualcomm started from scratch in the PC market with the Snapdragon X when it launched earlier this year.

Intel reported sales of nearly $30 billion for its "Client Computing Group", in 2023. This includes not just PC processors but also chips for motherboards as well as cellular modems and Wi-Fi controllers.

Qualcomm's $4bn is still expected to be a lot smaller than what Intel makes from its CPU sales. Qualcomm expects to sell a large number of PC processors before 2029. This means that a large number of PCs based on Arm, most likely laptops, will be purchased by end users.

It's hard to tell how laptops equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors are doing. One key question is if Qualcomm's success will lead to a larger PC processor market or if it could be a zero-sum affair, taking sales away from Intel, AMD, or both?

Both are likely to be true. The other question is whether Qualcomm will be producing PC processors in 2029. Qualcomm and Arm are currently battling it out in court over Qualcomm's right to make CPUs using Arm's instructions sets.

Arm has stated that it intends cancel Qualcomm's license to manufacture CPUs based on Arm. We suspect that even if Qualcomm wins the legal case, it will result in a higher licence fee for Arm than Qualcomm ceasing production of the chips.

While all of this is happening, there are rumours that Nvidia plans to enter the PC chip market, possibly as early as 2025, with a new Arm-based processor. It's not clear how this relates to Qualcomm's alleged $4 billion in PC processor sales per year. If Nvidia sells billions more PC processors than Qualcomm, then the market is sure to be crowded.

We're waiting to see who can get PC games to run reliably and consistently with an Arm CPU. Apple and Qualcomm have both shown that Arm cores are more than capable of competing with AMD and Intel x86 CPUs in terms of raw performance. Software compatibility and game support remain the main obstacles.

It will be interesting if the big game publishers start releasing native Arm builds of their newest games anytime soon. Support for games is absolutely crucial if PC gaming on Arm is going to take off.