My last article talked about a specific laptop with a Snapdragon processor, the Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen 6. For my needs, it stands head and shoulders above the otherwise exactly identical models with Intel and AMD processors – wildly extended battery life, reliable fast startup, no heat or fan noise, full performance on battery, no compromises.

There are already other laptops with Snapdragon processors – Microsoft has a variety of Snapdragon Surface laptops, Lenovo just announced three new Snapdragon laptops, HP has several models, Dell now has both consumer and business Snapdragon laptops. It’s a market niche that will become mainstream in 2026. Qualcomm just announced the next generation of Snapdragon X2 processors coming in a few months – even more power and battery goodness – and manufacturers will be flooding the market with laptops built with them, including many that are cheaper than the Thinkpad T14s Gen 6.

For nearly three decades the computer industry has been defined by “Wintel” (seriously, that’s what it’s called), the symbiotic relationship between Windows and Intel processors. Now Microsoft and Intel are in a messy breakup and Microsoft is seriously wooing its new bestie Snapdragon. The Snapdragon revolution is the beginning of a permanent realignment of the PC industry. 

Let’s take a very, very quick drive through history – simplified but I think accurate. I’m going to leave out all the jargon, I promise, except for two terms. Memorize these, they’ll be on the quiz.

Intel = x86 Intel’s processors have lots of marketing names and code names, and AMD makes the same kind of processors with even more obscure names. Let’s refer to all of them as x86 processors. It’s the architecture that has driven the personal computer industry for more than four decades.

Snapdragon = Arm Qualcomm makes Snapdragon processors but that’s just the latest marketing name. The underlying architecture is called Arm. (There are historical reasons for the name. Just accept it.) All smartphones use Arm-based processors.

Intel nearly collapsed in 2024. It was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in November 2024. Its survival is still in doubt. Intel got a bunch of cash in 2025 from investments by Nvidia and the US government and a new CEO laid off 25,000 employees to cut expenses but those are only stopgaps. A company named “Intel” will still exist going forward but it is perched on the edge of a cliff, likely either to split into pieces or drastically downsize.

The collapse began twenty years ago.

In 2005 Apple moved its Macs to Intel processors. Intel wins, yay!

At about the same time, Steve Jobs approached Intel CEO Paul Otellini and asked him to design and manufacture Intel chips for a secret project, the “iPhone.” After deep consideration, Intel said, no thanks. It’s one of the great blunders in corporate history. That catastrophic decision laid the groundwork for Intel’s slow-motion implosion over the next twenty years.

After Intel’s rejection, Apple chose Arm processors for the iPhone and companies that weren’t Intel benefited from the growth of the mobile market. Enormous resources were poured into Samsung and TSMC to build billions of smartphone chips and into Qualcomm to evolve Arm into a high performance platform. 

Intel stubbornly focused on its powerful and power-hungry chips, year after year, decade after decade. Arm chips became more efficient while Intel’s attempts to make more efficient chips were underpowered failures. Intel lost a decade to disastrous manufacturing mistakes and delays, while competitors raced ahead.

Until 2020, Arm processors were perfect for phones and iPads but never powerful enough to run personal computers.

Apple broke through that barrier.

Apple saw the writing on the wall and decided to end its reliance on Intel processors for Macs. In 2020 Apple released the first Arm-based M1 chip for Macbooks, a shockwave that changed the industry forever. Apple’s M-series chips deliver high performance and shocking battery life, running cool and fanless while Windows laptops with Intel processors – your laptop! – run hot and loud.

It is hard to capture the enormity of what Apple did and how devastating it was for Intel. Every year since then Intel has promised that it would have x86 processors that were less power-hungry and more reliable, you betcha. Year after year, Intel has failed to deliver. The latest Intel chips, code-named “Lunar Lake” in 2025 and “Panther Lake” in 2026 – they’re better than earlier Intel chips, kind of almost as good as Snapdragon but nah, not really.

Intel’s collapse came to a head when it reported disastrous losses in the third quarter of 2024 but that was the product of long-term strategic failures during the previous decades. It’s worth mentioning that Intel has also failed to find a place in the AI market. It’s building huge fabs in Ohio and Arizona but has no major customers and no obvious place in the AI market.

Platforms endure. Intel will use all its marketing power to convince you that its new processors are the equal of Snapdragon chips. (They’re not.) We’re not done with x86 processors, far from it. There is tremendous value in branding, familiarity, and compatibility.

But I think we’ll look back on 2026 as an inflection point where it’s obvious that Intel is an also-ran, an afterthought, a nostalgic memory.

Microsoft has been trying to escape Intel’s vortex of failure for more than a decade, but Arm processors were never a good fit for Windows until now.

In 2012 Microsoft introduced Windows RT, a version of Windows 8 running on Arm processors in a tablet. It was painfully slow and most programs wouldn’t run.

In 2017 Microsoft introduced Surface Pro X, a version of Windows 10 running on Arm processors in a laptop. It was painfully slow and most programs wouldn’t run.

But everything is coming together in 2026. Snapdragon processors run Windows 11 just as fast as x86 processors and most programs run just fine, thanks to Qualcomm’s steady progress on performance and improvements by Microsoft under the hood to make programs run well.

Microsoft will release a Windows 11 update in the next few months specifically for the new Snapdragon X2 chips. And Microsoft is continuing to tweak the emulation engine – sorry, jargon, think “magic fairy dust” – to improve compatibility and performance of apps and games.

And although we’ve only mentioned laptops so far, Qualcomm and others are hinting they will have Snapdragon desktop PCs on the market this year.

Microsoft isn’t ghosting Intel yet but it’s definitely swiping right on Snapdragon. Keep your eyes open next time you go laptop shopping. It’s a new Snapdragon world out there for 95% of you.