Perhaps the most impressive thing about today's Qualcomm showcase was a test rig showing the Snapdragon 8250 system-on-a-chip playing a 720p video. The chip (under the yellow tag in the picture left - click to enlarge) is rather smaller than my thumbnail and it did not even feel warm to the touch.

The Snapdragon uses an ARM-based CPU core, and TI offers a similar range of SoCs, which are targetted at the emerging netbook category and will compete with systems using Intel's Atom chips.  There seems little chance that Atom-based platforms will be able to match these SoCs on power efficiency very soon.

Staff marketing manager Anita Hix, showing off the prototype 8250-based Alaska netbook(below left and right), pointed out that it is not just the processor drain you need to take into accout. Snapdragon packs a wealth of functionality  that Intel has to put on peripheral chips.

The ARM-based core architecture supports Linux, Windows Mobile, Android, and Qualcomm's own Brew Mobile Platform. Adobe has pledged to work with ARM to improve Flash support, and Microsoft's rival Silverlight is expected to work with Windows Mobile platform. Even so it remains to be seen if these new platforms will be able to match the PC web experience.

The success of the iPhone and iPod Touch is forcing site designers to beware of being PC-centric but buyers of first generation devices will still probably need to balance the Snapdragon's cool power efficiency against the wealth of software available on the PC.

The Alaska was running an open-source office suite called Thinkfree, which claims to be Microsoft-compatible, and there seems no reason why it should not service the basic needs of people on the move.

As least as important, in my view, is the question of whether these non-Intel platforms can find handwriting-recognition technology to match that of Microsoft's Tablet PC. software. .
That this has yet to take off in a big way is surely due to the fact that tablets have so far been very expensive, power hungry, and cumbersome. Screen texture also needs to be improved, but meanwhile I see no reason why mobile screens should not support the use of paper-like disposable overlays for writing. 

This could be a task suitable for the dual-core Snapdragon, but Qualcomm today did not seem to have considered the possibility. The first device, Intel based or not, to crack the input problem on these small devices could scoop the market.