Qualcomm is gearing up to make several announcements at the upcoming Tech Summit and we recently reported about the company focusing on the new upcoming ARM-based chips to compete against the Apple M-series chips for PCs.

So far, we have seen a few Windows computers powered by Qualcomm’s ARM chips and not from any other chipset maker and as it turns out, there’s a reason behind this. XDA-Developers reports that Qualcomm has an exclusive deal with Microsoft for Windows on ARM, but the deal is set to expire soon.

Also, Microsoft has also publicly said that anyone can build a Windows on an ARM chip. The exclusive deal was in place because both Microsoft and Qualcomm worked together for the development of Windows on ARM.

With the deal set to expire, we will be seeing more and more manufacturers competing in this space. There’s also a possibility that Samsung, which is now working with AMD for graphics processors on its chips, could make Exynos-powered Windows PCs.

MediaTek has already announced that the company is planning to build a chipset for Windows on ARM and with Qualcomm also working for the same for the past few years, it’s inevitable that the transition is about to take off from x86 architecture to ARM. It’s also high time for Windows given that Apple is making impressive progress towards this with its new Apple Silicon chips.

It’s been a few years since Windows on ARM was first announced and has made quite progress, including adding support for x64 emulation, along with ARM64EC, to make it easier to run apps natively with emulated plug-ins. There’s still more work to do but it’s good to see the development picking up pace and with more players getting involved, they can push the platform further.

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