About Microsoft’s Alleged WOA Exclusivity Deal with Qualcomm (Premium)

According to one report, Microsoft has an exclusivity deal with Qualcomm for Windows on ARM (WOA) that’s expiring soon. And that means that other hardware makers will be able to create chipsets for WOA PCs. Why any would want to is unclear. Why anyone believes this is a good idea is likewise unclear.

XDA Developers revealed the exclusivity deal this week, noting that it will expire soon. This is interesting on a number of levels, but the two biggest concerns are that WOA, to date, has been a disaster, while Apple has been able to not just transition Macs to its ARM-based Apple Silicon platform, but see impressive performance and battery life improvements. Naturally, Windows enthusiasts are wondering what’s up. And many are understandably, but incorrectly, blaming Qualcomm for the differences between the two platforms.

That’s not fair. Microsoft partnered with Qualcomm on WOA for two reasons and was right to do so. One, it wanted Intel to feel some competitive heat because it was too focused on performance and not focused enough on efficiency. And two, there were no other choices: With AMD “circling the drain” at the time—Microsoft’s Terry Myerson’s words—Qualcomm was the only at-scale processor maker to which it could turn. This was the only viable option at the time to expand Windows beyond Intel.

Things have changed a lot since the 2016 WOA reveal, of course. AMD is back, and it is allegedly working on an ARM-based chipset with Microsoft. Intel has new leadership, and it is now serious about both performance and efficiency, and its ARM-like Alder Lake chipsets point to an obvious future for its PC-based chipsets. And WOA. Well, WOA has failed miserably.

WOA’s failure is due to many things, but it all boils down to the problems of making a legacy x86-based platform, Windows, run efficiently on a more modern and mobile-focus platform like the ARM-based Snapdragon series. Originally designed for phones, Snapdragon has now expanded dramatically, and Qualcomm makes versions specifically tailored for IoT devices, wearables, phones, tablets, and PCs. But its PC-based chipsets have never lived up to the performance promises. So Qualcomm purchased NUVIA to address the PC market. And won’t have new chipsets until 2023 at the earliest.

This gives AMD and Intel time to adopt ARM or ARM-like architectures. And it gives companies like Samsung and MediaTek, which also make ARM processors, an opening in the PC market. Even though it’s unclear why either would even bother.

Folks, ARM is not inevitable on the PC. Far from it. And that’s because the Mac and PC markets are quite different. Where it absolutely makes sense for Apple to move its Mac products to ARM because all of its hardware runs on this platform, it likewise makes a lot less sense on the PC side, where backward compatibility is paramount. My expectation is that Intel (and perhaps AMD) will adopt enough ARM-like characteristics in their x86-based designs that Windows and the PC will never move to ARM at all.

But we’ll see. Perhaps as soon as CES, in January, we’ll hear about some coming generation of non-Qualcomm WOA chipsets. Perhaps Microsoft will be able to bring Windows 11 to M1-based Macs officially, at least allowing Parallels to have a fully supported virtualization product on that platform. Perhaps. But seriously. Who even cares anymore?

What Windows and the PC needs is a platform that can perform as well as macOS does on Apple Silicon. And that means a lot of things, not just performance but also real-world battery life, which is the poster child for efficiency. But we pretty much do have those things right now, and it’s notable, perhaps, that even Apple has to use active cooling on most of its M1-based Macs because doing otherwise would throttle performance. So Apple has also run into the same issue we ran into earlier with WOA: Sure, you can improve the performance, but doing so will decrease battery life (at least with WOA; Mac battery life was so bad before they’re seeing improvements now) and will require non-silent active cooling. And larger, thicker form factors. Apple’s new M1-based Macs are thicker and heavier than their Intel-based predecessors. Huh.

As we watched this same thing start to happen with WOA, the obvious question emerges: if this platform simply arrives at a level of performance that is similar to Intel but now has much lower battery life and non-silent form factors, why even bother? We can get there with Intel and AMD. In fact, we can do better. I don’t think the x86 architecture is something that the PC can get past. I think it’s here to stay.

We’ll see. But any irrational exuberance about MediaTek, or Samsung, or whatever, entering the WOA market is just that, irrational. ARM is the future, for sure. I’m just not sure it’s the future of the PC anymore.