Intel CEO: Why he isn’t scared of Nvidia or Qualcomm PC chips
Intel (INTC) CEO Pat Gelsinger isn’t afraid of a little competition from Nvidia (NVDA) or Qualcomm (QCOM), at least when it comes to one part of the chip market.
During Intel’s third quarter earnings call on Thursday, Gelsinger told analysts that the threat of either company taking away market share from Intel in the PC CPU (central processing unit) market isn’t something he’s worried about.
“Arm and Windows client alternatives … generally they've been relegated to pretty insignificant roles in the PC business,” Gelsinger said when asked about reports that Nvidia is working on building an Arm-based CPU to rival Intel’s own PC offerings. Qualcomm also recently announced its own Intel challenger.
“We take all competition seriously … but think history is our guide here. We don't see these as potentially being all that significant overall,” Gelsinger said. “Our momentum is strong. We have a strong roadmap for Meteor Lake launching … Dec. 14.”
Meteor Lake is Intel’s next-generation chip and marks a major departure from its past designs. The new chips are made up of individual pieces called chiplets that make up the CPU, GPU (graphics processing unit), and other components of a traditional chip to come together to form a whole product.
The idea is to make a more efficient and powerful chip that Intel’s corporate customers can easily customize. Meteor Lake also includes a NPU, or neural processing unit, to power AI operations.
On Monday, Reuters reported that Nvidia is in the midst of developing its own Arm-based CPUs meant for use in Windows-based PCs to rival Intel and AMD’s existing offerings. Nvidia already develops its Grace Arm-based CPU for data centers, so it’s not the company’s first time getting into the game.
Qualcomm, meanwhile, unveiled its latest CPU for Windows PCs, dubbed the Snapdragon X Elite, during an event held in Hawaii this week. According to the company, the X Elite will be able to power AI-based tasks and have enough performance to tangle with Intel’s PC chips and Apple’s custom chips. Qualcomm has produced its own PC chips in the past, though it ran into compatibility issues when trying to run some Windows apps.
The Nvidia report and Qualcomm news come as the global PC market is in the midst of a turnaround after two years of steep sales declines following a massive spike during the pandemic. Consumers purchased millions of PCs at the start of the pandemic to both work from home and stay occupied during lockdowns.
According to research firm Gartner, PC shipments have declined significantly over the past eight quarters. But there’s hope for the industry on the horizon.
“The good news for PC vendors is that the worst could be over by the end of 2023,” Gartner director and analyst Mikako Kitagawa said via a press release in early October. “The business PC market is ready for the next replacement cycle, driven by the Windows 11 upgrades. Consumer PC demand should also begin to recover as PCs purchased during the pandemic are entering the early stages of a refresh cycle.”
That should give Intel a nice boost going into the next year. But, depending on how Qualcomm’s chips turn out and if Nvidia’s are available by then, it could be a boon for its rivals, as well.
Either way, Intel is still far and away the PC market leader, holding 70% of the market as of January 2023, and Gelsinger doesn’t seem concerned about it losing that position anytime soon.
Daniel Howley is the tech editor at Yahoo Finance. He's been covering the tech industry since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @DanielHowley.
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