March 18th Update: During today's flagship Snapdragon product launch event, Qualcomm announced that the Snapdragon brand has reached its 12th anniversary milestone, having powered over 1.9 billion smartphones worldwide.
Qualcomm's dominance in both technology and user experience creates a formidable gap, dividing the Android mobile platform into two categories: Snapdragon and everything else.
According to data, in 2023, Snapdragon platforms accounted for 73% of global shipments in high-end smartphones, reaching a staggering 83% in flagship devices. It's safe to say that Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors have almost become a standard feature in flagship Android smartphones.
It's worth noting that Qualcomm's Snapdragon Fans Club has been around for three years now, boasting a fan base of 14 million.
In 2012, Qualcomm unveiled the S4 series processors, which included the company's first quad-core processor, the APQ8064. That same year marked the official birth of the Chinese name "骁龙" (Xiao Long) for Qualcomm's processors.
Since 2013, Qualcomm has introduced a new naming scheme for its processors, called "Snapdragon + number," and launched the new flagship Snapdragon 800 processor.
In April 2014, Qualcomm released the then-famous Snapdragon 810 "Dragon" processor, mainly in response to Apple's release of the A7 processor the previous year, which was 64-bit.
In November 2015, the Snapdragon 820 was introduced, featuring Qualcomm's self-developed Kryo architecture. However, due to high power consumption, especially in smartphones with inadequate cooling systems at the time, it was also referred to as the "second-generation dragon."
Starting with the Snapdragon 820, Qualcomm expanded Snapdragon's positioning to include "mobile platforms" and began experimenting with heterogeneous computing platforms.
In 2017, Qualcomm launched the game-changing Snapdragon 835, setting a new record for flagship SoC energy efficiency, surpassing iPhones for the first time in overall battery life among Android flagships.
Following that, there were the Snapdragon 845, 855, 865, 888, 8 Gen1, 8+, 8 Gen2, and the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen3 flagship processors, along with numerous other processors aimed at different market segments.
Of all these Snapdragon processors from Qualcomm, which one left the deepest impression on you?
