Qualcomm was in a dilemma with the Snapdragon X Elite CPUs in the Copilot+ laptops, but the company is struggling to expand beyond the initial lineup. Just days after the first orders arrived, Qualcomm suddenly canceled the Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows OS and promised to refund the payments made by developers who ordered the mini PC.
We first heard about the Snapdragon Dev Kit in May, when Qualcomm announced it alongside the launch of the Copilot+ laptops. It was part of Qualcomm’s ambitions for Windows desktop PCs, and Windows PCs on a broader scale, allowing developers to play around with the most powerful available CPU Snapdragon X Elite unit – X1E-00-1DE, which is not available on any consumer device and has over 100 watts of power at its disposal.
May turned to June, and finally, in July, orders for the kit were launched with the retailer Arrow. YouTuber Jeff Geerling placed an order and was promised to receive the development kit the next day. That didn’t happen. The shipping schedule was delayed to September, and it seems Geerling was among the first to actually receive the development kit. Just two weeks after receiving the device, Geerling received an email from Arrow:
“The Developer Kit product did not fully meet our usual standards of excellence, so we regret to inform you that we have, unfortunately, made the decision to halt this product temporarily.”
In the comments, many users reported receiving the same email on the same day or within a few days of the development kit’s arrival. Geerling had already had the opportunity to test the development kit and found it surprisingly capable, although it was disappointing as a developer-only product. The aim of such a development kit is to provide hardware to software developers to create applications for the Windows on Arm operating system, as Qualcomm is trying to entice developers to bring applications from x86 to Arm.
It is not clear why Qualcomm made this move. In June, the company mentioned that its ambitions go beyond laptops, and the dev kit was a step in that direction. Perhaps Qualcomm struggled to control its chips in a high-performance environment, or perhaps the cost of producing the kit was not worth it for the company. Regardless of the reason, the cancellation represents a major setback for the company.
