Skip to main content

Meet Dragonwing, Qualcomm’s big push into robots, drones, and more AI

The Qualcomm Dragonwing logo.
Qualcomm

Qualcomm, the company best known for its Snapdragon family of processors which power so many of the phones we love, has introduced a new brand called Dragonwing. However, before you get too excited, the name won’t be on chips you’ll find inside consumer mobile products or even laptops. Qualcomm calls Dragonwing a “brand portfolio,” and a, “significant step in our journey to empower businesses and industries to scale to new heights.”

Dragonwing is aimed at businesses and at the moment, Qualcomm is only announcing the brand and its intentions, rather than specific products. When it does talk about the first products, they’re destined for use in networking systems, cellular infrastructure hardware, and embedded IoT systems, where they’ll be used in everything from robots and drones to cameras and smart handheld devices.

Recommended Videos

Dragonwing will extend outside hardware too, with Qualcomm indicating it will also cover custom software and, of course, AI. With the new portfolio, Qualcomm expects to work with industries including telecoms, manufacturing, supply chains, retail, and energy companies. The new brand comes a new logo, and it’s highly reminiscent of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon logo, just in purple.

The new brand will take center stage for Qualcomm at Mobile World Congress 2025, which takes place in Barcelona, Spain between March 3 and March 6, where it will be very keen to romance businesses wanting to see what the new portfolio offers. We will also find out whether the company has new Snapdragon products destined for consumer tech products at the show.

Dragonwing isn’t a brand you’ll see on boxes stacked up in Best Buy or shouted about on stage during a new smartphone launch, but it’s an important new direction for Qualcomm, and it’s helpful for you to understand what the new brand involves, and why you’ll likely hear more about it over the next few weeks.

Andy Boxall
Andy has written about mobile technology for almost a decade. From 2G to 5G and smartphone to smartwatch, Andy knows tech.
Apple’s AI is causing the company big problems, data shows
Apple Intelligence on the Apple iPhone 16 Plus.

Information on AI smartphone use from China has shown the significant battle Apple will have on its hands when (if?) Apple Intelligence eventually launches there, as well as how longer delays will see it lose market share in a fiercely competitive space. Huawei currently controls 34.8% of the AI smartphone market in China, while Xiaomi has 26.9%, according to new data, giving the mobile giants a massive 61.7% share together, which dwarfs the next player in the space, Vivo, with 11.6%.

Apple is nowhere to be seen in the data. The company announced its Apple Intelligence AI platform in June, and detailed it further with the iPhone 16 series in September, but the first official release didn’t arrive until October 2024 with iOS 18.1. Even now, some features are still only available in beta releases, and not all regions even have access to Apple Intelligence’s basic features. This includes China, where Apple faces regulatory problems.

Read more
Qualcomm just made the future of smartphone cameras a lot more exciting
A person holding the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and Xiaomi 14 Ultra.

Qualcomm made big announcement this week. The company just unveiled its new Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, and even if you don't keep a particularly close eye on the smartphone chipset world, it's something that's worth getting excited about. Qualcomm is promising substantial performance and efficiency improvements over last year's already excellent Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is great news for next year's slate of flagship Android phones.

But there's more to the Snapdragon 8 Elite than it being more powerful and more efficient. It also has the potential to substantially change the way we use the cameras on our phones. How so? I talked to Judd Heape, VP of product management at Qualcomm, to better understand it myself, and I came away significantly more excited about the immediate (and faraway) future of our smartphone cameras.
Behind-the-scenes camera upgrades that matter

Read more
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is Qualcomm’s new smartphone chip, and it’s a big deal
Official rendering of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip.

Qualcomm has just announced its next major smartphone chip. The successor to the excellent Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in phones like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and OnePlus 12 is here, and in many ways, it's a very big deal.

Talking about smartphone chips isn't always the most exciting thing, but Qualcomm has given us a lot to talk about and look forward to this time around. Let's get into it.
Qualcomm's new chip has a new name

Read more