Microsoft began a product event on Monday, at which it is anticipated to introduce consumer gadgets and artificial intelligence (AI)-related gear and software.

The Windows manufacturer is anticipated to unveil a new iteration of its Surface Pro tablet and Surface laptop, which will include Qualcomm chips built on Arm Holdings’ architecture, during the event on its headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Qualcomm and other producers of lower-power Arm components have attempted to compete in the Windows-PC industry after Intel’s CPUs controlled the personal computer market for decades.

A “neural processing unit” included in Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite CPUs is intended to speed up AI-focused apps like Microsoft’s Copilot software.

The product event was organised by Microsoft one day before to the commencement of its yearly developer conference.

Microsoft wants to maintain its lead in the competition to create AI solutions that users are ready to pay for. As other Big Tech firms compete to dominate the developing industry, it was able to surpass Alphabet thanks to its cooperation with OpenAI, the manufacturer of ChatGPT.

AI voice assistants have had difficulty achieving two key aspects of realistic voice conversations: responding in real time and being interrupted. OpenAI and Alphabet’s Google demonstrated these capabilities last week. Additionally, Google declared that it will be adding a number of generative AI elements to its profitable search engine.

Since Apple introduced its bespoke chips based on Arm technologies and abandoned Intel’s CPUs, the PC market has been under growing pressure from the firm.

Mac computers now feature faster performance and longer battery life thanks to Apple-designed processors, which consume less energy than chips made by competitors.

In 2016, Microsoft assigned Qualcomm the task of spearheading the project to switch the Windows operating system to Arm’s chip designs. This year marks the end of Qualcomm’s monopoly on Microsoft Windows devices. As previously reported by Reuters, attempts are underway by other chip makers, including Nvidia, to produce their own Arm-based PC CPUs.

(Adapted from MarketScreener.com)