Snapdragon Becomes Independent Brand With Simplified Model Names

Shortly before the presentation of its latest high-end SoC for top smartphones, Qualcomm announced that it would switch the marketing of the “most popular ARM chips”. The Snapdragon brand will become independent in the future and the naming of the processors will be simpler.

In the run-up to the Snapdragon Tech Summit 2021, which begins in exactly one week, at which Qualcomm will probably present the new top chip with the code name “Waipio”, which has been developed under the internal model number “SM8450”, the company has simplified the naming scheme for its smartphone Platforms announced.

Simple names are easier for customers to choose

Instead of the usual “mess of numbers” that previously resulted in names like Snapdragon 695 or Snapdragon 888, they want to use a “simplified and consistent” naming scheme that consists of a “single number” for the respective chip series and a “generation number”. The beginning is made with the new Snapdragon 8 series so that the new top chip from Qualcomm will definitely not bear the name “Snapdragon 898“, as was initially suspected for a long time.

As before, the graduation according to performance will probably remain in place in the future. Previously it was the Snapdragon 400, 600, 700, and 800 families, but in the future, there will also be correspondingly graded names for the less powerful model series in addition to the Snapdragon 8. The company has not yet revealed exactly how the new upper-class chip and it’s subsequent, less powerful sister products should be called.

Snapdragon brand is marketed seperately

By changing the naming of its processors, Qualcomm wants to combat the same problem that other chip manufacturers such as Intel have. Due to a large number of models, it has now become difficult to distinguish the chips based on their model numbers and thus assess how much performance they have or which product line they belong to.

Another measure to better market the Qualcomm chips to a broader audience concerns the brand name of the product series itself. Instead of the previously used name “Qualcomm Snapdragon“, which always emphasizes the company name, the brand “Snapdragon” should at least be used in the Communication will become more adept in the future. So one speaks of the “Snapdragon 8” and no longer of the “Qualcomm Snapdragon 8”.

Qualcomm justifies this step, among other things, with the fact that the “Snapdragon” brand is already the best-known and most popular name in the field of mobile chips for smartphones and tablets. Qualcomm processors actually form the heart of the most important smartphone series apart from the Apple iPhone. So Samsung, Xiaomi, Microsoft, and all other large and small providers of Android devices use the Snapdragon series SoCs in their flagship models and a variety of other devices.