Pre-release Qualcomm announced it was developing the
Scorpion central processing unit (CPU) in November 2007. The Snapdragon system on chip (SoC) was announced in November 2006 and included the Scorpion processor, as well as other semiconductors. This also included Qualcomm's first custom
Hexagon digital signal processor (DSP). According to a Qualcomm spokesperson, it was named Snapdragon, because "Snap and Dragon sounded fast and fierce." The following month, Qualcomm acquired
Airgo Networks for an undisclosed amount; it said Airgo's 802.11a/b/g and 802.11n Wi-Fi technology would be integrated with the Snapdragon product suite. Early versions of Scorpion had a processor core design similar to the
Cortex-A8. The product can output display at up to
720p resolution, render 3D graphics, and supports a up-to 12-megapixel camera. By November 2008, 15 device manufacturers had embed Snapdragon chips in their consumer electronics products. The netbook used 1.5 GHz processors and was intended for developing markets. Qualcomm started using
45 nm process for SoC productions in late 2009. In June 2010, Snapdragon chips were incorporated into 120 product designs in development. for LTE networks that November.
Apple had a dominant market position for smartphones at the time and did not incorporate Snapdragon into any of its products. The success of Snapdragon therefore relied on competing
Android phones. Support for the
Windows Phone 7 operating systems was added to Snapdragon in October 2010. and had a 50% market share of a $7.9 billion smartphone processor market. As of July 2014 Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips were embedded in 41% of smartphones. Snapdragon chips are also used in Android-based smartwatches, and in vehicles like the
Maserati Quattroporte and
Cadillac XTS. In early 2011, Qualcomm announced Krait, an in-house CPU microarchitecture design supporting the ARM v7 instruction set. SoCs featuring Krait were named S4 supports
asynchronous symmetrical multi-processing (aSMP), meaning each processor core adjusted its clock speed and voltage based on the device's activity in order to optimize battery usage. Prior models were renamed to S1, S2 and S3 to distinguish between each generation. The S4-based generation of Snapdragon SoCs began shipping to product manufacturers with the MSM8960 in February 2012. In an overall system benchmark, the 8960 obtained a score of 907, compared to 528 and 658 for the
Galaxy Nexus and
HTC Rezound respectively. In a Quadrant benchmark test, which assesses raw processing power, a dual-core Krait processor had a score of 4,952, whereas the quad-core
Tegra 3 was just under 4,000. The quad-core version, APQ8064, was made available in July 2012. It was the first Snapdragon SoC to use Qualcomm's Adreno 320 graphics processing unit (GPU). In July 2011 Qualcomm acquired certain assets from
GestureTek in order to incorporate its gesture recognition intellectual property into Snapdragon SoCs. In mid-2012 Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon software development kit (SDK) for Android devices at the Uplinq developer conference.It also collaborated with
Microsoft to optimize
Windows Phone 8 for Snapdragon semiconductors. As of July 2014, the market share of Android phones had grown to 84.6 percent, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips powered 41% of smartphones. On the announcement of Snapdragon 800 in 2013
Consumer Electronics Show, Qualcomm renamed their prior models to the 200, 400 and 600 series.
2014–present The debut of Apple's 64-bit A7 chip in the
iPhone 5S forced Qualcomm to rush out a competing 64-bit solution, despite the capable performance of the Snapdragon 800/801/805, since their existing Krait cores were only 32-bit. The first 64-bit SoCs, the
Snapdragon 808 and 810, were rushed to market and released in 2014 using Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 cores. They suffered from overheating problems and throttling, particularly the 810, which led to Samsung ditching Snapdragon for its
Galaxy S6 flagship phone. The entry-level 200 series was expanded with six new processors using
28 nanometer manufacturing and dual or quad-core options in June 2013. In February 2015, Qualcomm re-branded its stand-alone modem products under the Snapdragon name; they were distinguished from SoCs using the "x" designation, such as the X7 or X12 modem. The first Snapdragon modem for 5G networks, the X50, was announced in October 2016 and released in late 2019. The octa-core Snapdragon 835 SoC is announced on 17 November 2016. It uses modified Cortex-A73 and A53 cores and is built using Samsung's
10 nanometer FinFET process. At Computex 2017 in May, Qualcomm and Microsoft announced plans to launch Snapdragon-based laptops running
Windows 10. Qualcomm partnered with
HP, Lenovo, and
Asus to release slim portables and 2-in-1 devices powered by the Snapdragon 835. Snapdragon 845 uses updated Cortex-A75 and A55 CPU, and the same 10-nanometer manufacturing process as 835. The 7 series is introduced in early 2018, targeting pricing and performances between the 6 and 8 series.
Asus,
HP and
Lenovo have begun selling
laptops with Snapdragon-based CPUs running
Windows 10 on ARM under the name "
Always Connected PCs". The Snapdragon 855 was released in 2019 and built on
TSMC's
7 nanometer process. The Snapdragon 865 supported
5G cellular network through a separate X55 modem. The 765 has integrated 5G. The Snapdragon 888 announced in December 2020 is the first Qualcomm SoC to feature ARM's Cortex-X series CPU architecture. NASA's
Ingenuity helicopter, which landed on Mars in 2021, has a Snapdragon 801 processor integrated onboard. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 added support for
Wi-Fi 7. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 added support for
SVE and
SME. ==Products==