Qualcomm: Return Rates For Snapdragon X PCs Are ‘Within Industry Norm’

Qualcomm provided the statement in response to a claim made by interim Intel co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus on Thursday that many retailers are seeing a large percentage of Arm PCs being returned due to software compatibility issues.

Qualcomm said return rates for PCs powered by its Arm-based Snapdragon X processors are “within industry norm” after one of Intel’s co-CEOs claimed that retailers are complaining about customers returning a large percentage of Arm PCs.

“Our devices continue to have greater than 4+ stars across consumer reviews and our products have received numerous accolades across the industry including awards from Fast Company, TechRadar, and many consumer publications. Our device return rates are within industry norm,” a Qualcomm representative said in a statement to CRN on Friday.

The spokesperson added that Qualcomm “expects 30 percent to 50 percent of laptops to move to non-x86 platforms” in the next five years.

The statement was provided in response to a claim made by interim Intel co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus on Thursday that many retailers are seeing a large percentage of Arm PCs being returned due to software compatibility issues.

“If you look at the return rate for Arm PCs, you go talk to any retailer, their number one concern is, ‘Wow, I get a large percentage of these back,’ because you go to set them up, and the things that we just expect don't work,’” said Holthaus, who was named one of Intel’s interim co-CEOs and CEO of Intel Products last week.

Qualcomm debuted its Arm-based Snapdragon X processors for the first batch of Copilot+ PCs from Microsoft and other OEMs in June. While many popular applications have native Arm-based versions, not all Windows software is officially supported by the processors yet. To address that gap, Microsoft and Qualcomm have developed an emulated layer, though it can’t handle all x86-based applications.

Holthaus, who previously led Intel’s Client Computing Group for more than two years, made her comment about high return rates for Arm PCs when asked about growing competition from Qualcomm and AMD at a financial conference on Thursday.

While Holthaus expects Arm to become a force to reckon with in the PC market, she said software compatibility issues will be a hurdle for Arm-based chip designers.

“If you look at the investment in Arm, you look at the work that Microsoft's done, there's been a very large push to make Arm ubiquitous in the PC, and there's some real challenges to Arm being ubiquitous in the PC,” she said.

At the same time, Holthaus noted that Apple “did a lot of the heavy lift for Arm” to make its custom, Arm-based M-series processors “ubiquitous” with its operating system and “walled garden stack” of software. Apple started to switch away from Intel CPUs in 2020 for its Mac computers and completed the transition last year.

Holthaus said while Intel was late to developing PC processors that balance performance and energy efficiency in a manner similar to Arm chips, Intel has since caught up and can provide an experience that is on par with its recently launched Core 200V Ultra CPUs.

“We are as performant on performance and battery life as most Arm devices out there, and so for our customers, a lot of them are saying, ‘Okay, you're finally in the ballpark of being focused on all these right things,’” she said.

While Holthaus said she has felt confident about Intel’s current PC strategy, she expects its list of rivals in the market to expand beyond AMD and Qualcomm next year.

“Everybody is really excited about the PC market, so we have more competitors than we've ever had. You will see more competitors enter the marketplace in 2025, and we’re going to have to be on our toes and make sure that we're winning,” she said.

This is all happening as Qualcomm ramps up hiring for key channel sales positions across the world to build a “global retail and commercial channel presence” for Snapdragon X.

“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,” said Kyle Houser, head of global commercial channel at Qualcomm, in an interview with CRN in June.