Apple dropped a grenade into the consumer laptop market in late 2020: Apple Silicon. The new processors, a replacement for the Intel hardware that had powered Macs for more than a decade, immediately brought improved performance, portability, and app compatibility to the Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro 13.

Intel’s problems have opened the door to competition, and it’s not just Apple that’s benefiting. Microsoft is working with Qualcomm to smoothly port Windows to ARM-based chips. Laptop makers are gradually rolling out these Qualcomm-powered PCs, some of which will debut at CES 2021.

“Both Microsoft and Qualcomm have invested heavily in this space, and even Apple's move to ARM will benefit the Windows market,” Jitesh Urbani, a research manager at IDC who focuses on global mobile device tracking, told Lifewire in an email.

ARM, a type of processor microarchitecture, is often used as the basis for processors in smartphones and tablets. More than 160 billion ARM-based chips had shipped through early 2020, with a pace that has accelerated to 22 billion per year since 2017.