SINGAPORE — Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. expects the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in Southeast Asia to boost demand for laptops powered by its Snapdragon X Series chips.

Qualcomm on Feb. 26 held its first-ever Snapdragon X Series Southeast Asia Media Summit here at Sentosa island to highlight their belief in the region’s potential to become a growth driver for the AI PC market.

“When you think about AI PCs and what’s happening with the overall demand, the overall demand for AI PCs is just skyrocketing. When you look at 2024, just in one year, there were more than 8 million PCs that were shipped in just the Southeast Asia region,” Qualcomm Senior Vice-President of Product Management and General Manager for Compute and Gaming Kedar Kondap said at the summit.

Mr. Kondap said they expect AI to add more than $1 trillion in value to the Southeast Asian economy by 2030, with the region’s spending on AI seen to reach $650 million by 2026, driven by the adoption of generative AI (GenAI) technologies.

“That’s a staggering number in terms of how we see disruption in the marketplace, the way we see AI PCs fueling the economy and driving use cases across every industry like we’ve never seen before… Consumers here in Southeast Asia are leading the way when it comes to adopting GenAI.”

Deploying AI solutions can have a positive impact on every single industry and is expected to transform the workplace, Mr. Kondap said, driving demand for on-device AI.

The Snapdragon X Series marked Qualcomm’s return to the PC chip space. It first launched the Snapdragon X Elite processor in 2023, which is for high-end machines priced at the $1,000 range. This was followed by the X Plus chip launched in 2024 that powers laptops at the $800 range.

Completing the Snapdragon X Series chips is the Snapdragon X launched in January, which is targeted for PCs priced at around $600.

“What we’d like to do with all of this is make sure unparalleled performance, incredible battery life and the exact same GenAI experiences can run across all of these platforms. We want to make sure that these platforms support every con-sumer’s needs, more so here in Southeast Asia,” Mr. Kondap said.

DEMOCRATIZING AI ACCESS

The launch of the midrange Snapdragon X chip forms part of Qualcomm’s goal to democratize AI access, especially in Southeast Asia where economies are at different stages of development and adoption of technologies, with var-ying levels of internet infrastructure, said Nitin Kumar, Qualcomm senior director for product management.

The processor delivers up to 163% faster CPU performance versus its competition at the same power and better battery efficiency for users’ on-device AI needs, he said.

Mr. Kumar said in a roundtable with Philippine tech media and influencers on the sidelines of the summit that he expects both consumers and commercial users to find use cases for AI PCs, with the entire Snapdragon X Series line of PC chips giving them options to find their “sweet spot” in terms of cost.

“Our mission is to provide that AI capability to everyone, democratize the on-device AI capability… Qualcomm has always advocated that the good AI performance should be a hybrid AI — so, things happening in the cloud and things happening on the mobile itself,” he said.

“We want to invest in the market. This event being hosted here is the key example for that. We’re launching Snapdragon X in Southeast Asia market for you, for the Philippine market as an example, to drive that message… that there is a better ex-perience out there in the PC ecosystem. We’re going to drive that performance, drive that battery life, drive that on-device AI, and we will continue to make investment in the region to make sure that there is that adoption of that message across broader set of countries, of course, including Philippines as well. So, we understand the market and we are not going to stop here.”

ST Liew, vice-president at Qualcomm and president of its business in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, likewise said at the same roundtable that they are bullish that both personal and business PC users can find the perfect fit among devices powered by their Snapdragon X Series chips.

“I’m very confident that the platforms we have introduced will address the needed interest and the needed spots in Philippines, because very soon, the different professions and the industries are going to realize that … [they] will solve a lot of problems,” Mr. Liew said.

MANUFACTURERS

At the summit, Mr. Liew moderated a fireside chat with top executives from leading Arm-based Copilot+ PC manufacturers, namely Jimmy Lin, regional director for Southeast Asia at ASUS; Paul Carter, Dell Technologies, Inc. vice-president for Client Solutions in the Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China region; Tarun Relhan, HP, Inc. head of Advanced Computing Systems for the Greater Asia region; and Sachin Bhatia, chief marketing officer for the Greater Asia Pacific region at Lenovo Personal Computing & Smart Devices.

The panel discussion touched on how Arm-based PCs powered by Snapdragon X Series chips are driving the on-device AI boom in Southeast Asia and how they are working to accelerate user adoption in the region.

ASUS’ Mr. Lin said Southeast Asia is made up of diverse and complicated markets at different levels of economic progress, which highlights the need for user education about the benefits of on-device AI.

“I think the first thing for us is to do the education and awareness. Because in Southeast Asia, we see that we are very different countries, like in Singapore is a high income, developed country. But we also have emerging coun-tries like Indonesia and the Philippines. For the people who live there, maybe they need to spend some amount of their salaries to afford one device. So, we have to prove to them that it is worth it to buy,” he said.

“In Southeast Asia, I would say 80% of the people will buy the stuff in the stores. People love to have a touch and feel feeling inside real stores. So, channel development is also very important.”

For their part, Lenovo’s Mr. Bhatia said to serve a diversified region like Southeast Asia, technology needs to be smart, accessible, and affordable.

“When I say smart, today the users are not looking just a device experience. They are looking at the entire ecosystem experience, whether they are using mobile, whether they are using tablet… it has to be a seamless connectiv-ity and seamless ecosystem. And second, there has to be a device for every user,” he said.

HP’s Mr. Relhan said governments in the region also play a huge role in driving AI adoption. “If you really look at it, it is not a decision which the consumer is driving… I think the drive needs to come in from the government, from big enterprises, to really adopt it, let the consumer feel it, use it, and then the drive automatically comes.”

“Southeast Asia is a leading region when it comes to the adoption of new technologies. Singapore was third on the AI index globally, but we also see it in other countries — Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines — there tends to be a leap forward in technology, from nothing to the latest right away. And we’re starting to see that with the adoption of Qualcomm architecture,” Dell’s Mr. Carter said.

“Everybody’s waiting for that one killer app. There isn’t one killer app. It’s going to be a cumulative effect of all apps. And that is what we’re seeing in both the consumer space and in the business space. It’s actually going to be the utilization of native apps. So, this region, I do believe, is going to be at the forefront of the adoption of AI PCs.” — Bettina V. Roc