Report: Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is 30% more expensive, cheaper Windows chips coming in 2025

Ben Schoon | Jun 17 2024 - 8:55 am PT

According to a new report from Ming-Chi Kuo, Qualcomm has plans to bring a cheaper Snapdragon chip to Windows machine, but also intends to considerably raise the price of Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.

Snapdragon chips make up the most powerful and popular flagship chipsets for Android devices, but they’ve been getting steadily more expensive over time. As Qualcomm aims to move to newer TSMC nodes and introduce the Oryon CPU to its mobile chips, Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 could see a major increase.

As was rumored previously, Kuo claims that Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will be around 25-30% more expensive than Gen 3, costing device makers around $190-200 for the chip alone. The increase, Kuo explains, comes primarily from using TSMC’s “latest and more expensive N3E node” which is a 3nm process. That would make this one of the first 3nm chips available to Android devices after Apple brought a 3nm process to the chip in last year’s iPhone 15 Pro.

Qualcomm previously confirmed that Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will launch in October.

A higher price could result in Android devices powered by the new chip also be sold for more expensive price tags.

Meanwhile, Kuo adds that Qualcomm has plans to launch a cheaper chip for Windows laptops.

The current Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus start shipping to customers this week in laptops from Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo, and many others, but with a starting price of $999. Apparently, Qualcomm’s “Canim” effort would bring a chip with the same AI power (40 TOPs) as Snapdragon X Elite, but at a cost suitable for laptops sold for as little as $599.

However, this new chip wouldn’t be coming until the end of 2025, apparently.