MediaTek Has No Plans for Windows ARM PCs Anytime Soon
Arm-based Windows PCs with chips from other manufacturers than Qualcomm should still be a long time coming. According to employees at Computex 2025, MediaTek has no short-term plans to get into the market for client PCs with Windows on ARM.
Qualcomm is and remains the only provider of ARM PCs
So far, Qualcomm only offers the first PCs on which Windows 11 in combination with an arm-based platform in the form of the SOCs of the Snapdragon-X series is in use. For years, however, there have also been rumors, according to which Mediatek works in any way to enable notebooks with its arm chips based on Windows 11.
In the course of the Computex 2025 trade fair, we were able to conduct discussions with long-time employees of the Taiwanian chip manufacturer at the Mediatek stand, which realized that we can still wait a long time before there are Windows PCs with a CPU from Mediatek. One did not want to comment on the long-lasting speculations about the so-called “AI notebooks” with new chips developed in cooperation with NVIDIA with the name “N1” and “N1X”, it made it clear that these devices should probably not come with Windows.
No Windows PCs with Companio Ultra to be expected
At Mediatek you don’t seem to have a particularly good relationship with Microsoft. So far, none of the larger customers have shown interest in the use of a MediaTek platform in conjunction with Windows 11 among the PC or device manufacturers, it was said by the employees in Taiwan’s capital Taipei at the status of the CPU specialist. The recently presented MediaTek Companio Ultra should only be used in Chromebooks. This is a new high-end SoC that is a “easier” variant of the Dimensity 9400 intended for smartphones with its ten “all-high-end” kernels.
MediaTek once planned low-end smartphones with Windows
The performance for mid-range arm notebooks would probably be given on the part of Mediateks, but there are probably no changes in the close relationship between Microsoft and Qualcomm, through which MediaTEK could gain a foothold as an additional platform supplier for Windows-based ARM PCs. Another anecdote that came to us at the Computex 2025 also shows that Mediatek does not receive much attention, although the Taiwaners are the largest providers of ARM chips for mobile devices according to quantities.
Mediatek had already tried to cooperate with Microsoft as a provider of ARM processors for smartphones with Windows as a provider of ARM processors for smartphones. There have already been prototypes and the like, according to the MediaTek employees. Mediatek wanted to see his chips used primarily in cheap Windows smartphones, but nothing came of it. In this case, Microsoft’s strategic interests of further cooperation with Mediatek got in the way. As is well known, the Redmonders decided to give up the development of Windows Phone in a billion-dollar flop after taking over the Nokia mobile device division and all the more spectacular. The last collaboration with Mediatek around Windows on his arm chips did not bear any fruits.
