Chip manufacture Qualcomm has confirmed that they are interested in providing their SoC solutions for Chromebooks, but only on premium devices. The news came from PCMag which reported that the company’s new director of product management, Monte Giles, is only interested if the average sale price of Chromebooks goes up higher.
“if the Chromebook market stays at sub-$300 [average selling prices] it’s not that interesting to us,” Giles said. Qualcomm wants to make premium Chromebooks, apparently. “What we’re watching closely is when the [average selling prices] start to go above $500.”
This would sit well with previous commits that suggest a Qualcomm-based Chromebook found in the Chrome OS Gerrit.
The addition of these mobile processor based solutions could offer ultra thin designs with plenty of horsepower to run the lightweight Chrome OS platform and could prove to be another revenue stream for the company. The company is already providing the SoCs for a new lineup of Windows based PCs (always connected) which could be a testing ground for a similar Chromebook in the future.
While Qualcomm powered Chromebooks would not be able to keep up with the Intel iCore equipped premium devices in the market, they could prove to be an excellent mid-tier or low-end premium device in the $500-600 range.
Source: PCMag
