Qualcomm CEO Says He's Seen Google's Android-Powered PC And Can't Wait To Buy One
The major announcements out of this year's Snapdragon Summit event have been focused on new Snapdragon silicon, including the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for flagship smartphones and Snapdragon X2 Elite for PCs. But not every bit of news has been expected. Towards the end of the opening keynote, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon chatted with Google's Rick Osterloh, head of platforms and devices, on a range of topics, the highlight of which is that Google is planning to merge Android with ChromeOS for a push into PCs.
This has been teased for quite some time now, though the Snapdragon Summit event brings further confirmation that it's still in Google's plans. Furthermore, it can be viewed as Qualcomm's clearest public endorsement yet of Google merging Android and ChromeOS into a unified platform, for which Osterloh expressed excitement.
Here's where the discussion takes place (starting around the 52min28sec mark)...
Amon asked Osterloh what he can share about what Qualcomm and Google are doing together as it applies to personal computing for a "new project" at Google.
"Our strategy overall is to bring really, really rich computing experiences to every category. So we talked about Autos, we talked about XR, we talked smartphones of course. In the past, we’ve always had very different systems between what we are building on PCs and what we are building in smartphones and we've embarked on a project to combine that," Osterloh said.
He went on to explain that Google is building a common technical foundation for its products on PCs and desktop computing systems. He also said it presents another way Qualcomm and Google can work together on Google's AI stack, particularly its Gemini model, and bring them to the PC domain.
"I think this is another way in which Android is gonna be able to serve everyone in every computing category," Osterloh added.
At that point, Amon chimed in to say he's seen what Google is working on in the PC space, saying "it's incredible" and "delivers on the vision of convergence of mobile and PC, and I can't wait to have one."
That's the extent of the details shared at Snapdragon Summit, but it's a pretty big nugget. Qualcomm obviously is making a major push of its own to be more represented in the PC space, which has so far been focused on Windows platforms and Copilot+ PCs. Adding Google into the mix gives Qualcomm yet another avenue to explore.
