Although Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit did not include a China satellite venue this year, Chinese enterprises have become the undeniable stars of the show.
On September 22, Qualcomm Technologies unveiled its sixth-generation Snapdragon 8 Super Ultimate Edition and sixth-generation Snapdragon 8 Ultimate Edition flagship mobile platforms in Hawaii, marking the first time the company has launched two flagship chips simultaneously. On the same day, Qualcomm issued another press release: partnering with three Chinese companies—StepFun, WuLiangHuo, and Longsys—to fully integrate the 30-billion-parameter StepEdge-Omni MoE large language model into smartphones.
Reading these two announcements together reveals an intriguing phenomenon. Every specific case Qualcomm showcased intensively today is tied to Chinese enterprises. Honor and Xiaomi were the two Chinese phone makers invited to speak at the Snapdragon Summit, and their new devices powered by Qualcomm's new flagship chips will launch shortly after. The initial flagship chip launch lineup—Xiaomi, vivo, Nubia, REDMI, OPPO, OnePlus, iQOO, and Honor—consists entirely of Chinese brands; even Motorola, the only one flying an American banner, is owned by Lenovo.
As for the press release about on-device large models, all three partners—StepFun, WuLiangHuo, and Longsys—are Chinese companies. Notably, that release wasn't even datelined from Hawaii but was directly filed from "Beijing."
The reality behind this is that Chinese enterprises have become the vanguard for Qualcomm's AI agent strategy implementation. Xiaomi, vivo, OPPO, and Honor together command a substantial share of global smartphone shipments, and their flagship device iteration cycles are far faster than Samsung's, enabling them to bring next-generation chips to market and validate real-world performance in the shortest possible time. For Qualcomm, Chinese enterprises are the fastest and largest-scale testing ground to get new flagship chips "up and running."
A prime testament is the timing of the Snapdragon Summit, which has been pushed earlier repeatedly due to Chinese partners' demands—from an initial December slot, moved to November, then October, and in the past two years further advanced to September. This ensures that Chinese companies' new phones can hit the golden sales season in October instead of ceding the prime market window to Apple's new iPhone.
If Chinese dominance among phone brands is old news, the partner lineup for this on-device 30-billion-parameter MoE model reveals a deeper layer of industry logic. StepFun is one of China's leading large-model startups; WuLiangHuo focuses on on-device inference engines, using its self-developed Ember inference engine to cut large-model memory requirements by more than 50%; and Longsys is a memory manufacturer deploying a storage-computing co-design approach to alleviate the persistent memory pressure of on-device large models.
These three companies each control a critical link—model, inference engine, and storage—in the on-device deployment chain, forming a complete technical pipeline that achieves prefill throughput exceeding 330 tokens per second, decode throughput exceeding 28 tokens per second, while maintaining stable continuous operation.
This "model company + inference engine company + memory company" three-way collaboration to tackle the hard problem of on-device deployment is difficult to replicate outside China. The reason is straightforward: China boasts the world's densest concentration of large-model startups and the largest, fastest-iterating smartphone brand ecosystem. Combined, these factors provide abundant scenarios and rapid trial-and-error speed for bringing large models to the edge.
Qualcomm's Senior Vice President and General Manager of Mobile, Chris Patrick, repeatedly emphasized "agentic AI experiences" this time, rather than just raw chip performance metrics. This shift in wording indicates Qualcomm's attention has moved from "whose chip scores higher in benchmarks" to "who can build and sell the AI experience first." And right now, the companies best positioned to pair next-generation chips with next-generation models and turn them into a fully demonstrable product are clustered in China.
In contrast, Samsung's pace in software-hardware integration is relatively slower; Chinese manufacturers, with the world's most active large-model startup ecosystem and fastest product iteration cycles, have instead become the ideal pioneering partners for Qualcomm to validate its "chip + model" combination play. Over the past few years, almost immediately after the Snapdragon Summit opens, Chinese companies have simultaneously launched next-generation flagships powered by the latest Snapdragon—something largely impossible for Samsung.
In the past, Samsung was always the priority launch partner for Qualcomm's newest flagships, but now Chinese enterprises have become Qualcomm's irreplaceable preferred collaborators. Chinese phone brands, large-model companies, and memory makers all participate in defining and delivering chip capabilities. Even StepFun, a large-model company founded only two or three years ago, has managed to co-create technology labels like "world's largest on-device phone model" with Qualcomm—a speed that would be very hard to replicate in U.S. or European supply chains.
Two weeks ago, Qualcomm's Executive Vice President, CFO, and COO Akash Palkhiwala told me that China is not only a critical market for Qualcomm, but that its collaboration in China has expanded from the original handset partners—Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, Honor—into new domains like automotive, IoT, wearables, and robotics. "As Qualcomm grows and transforms, our partnership with China continues to expand and deepen," he said. He noted that this solid partnership not only brings growth opportunities to Qualcomm but also creates value for China's industrial ecosystem.
Today, more and more Chinese device makers and ecosystem participants are no longer content with just the China market—they are actively seeking global expansion, and that is precisely where the collaboration with Qualcomm can deliver significant value. Palkhiwala specifically cited Xiaomi as an example of how the relationship between Qualcomm and Chinese firms has evolved: it started with handsets, then extended to IoT devices and wearables, and now Qualcomm technology and platforms are also applied in Xiaomi's automotive products.
"We provide technology innovation, they bring business expansion and revenue, and then we grow together—not just in China but globally, step by step, achieving mutual wins," he said. Understanding today's two press releases matters more than memorizing specs like "5GHz peak frequency" or "33K tokens per second prefill speed."
The real message Qualcomm wants to convey is that its next-generation flagship strategy cannot do without China's device makers, model companies, and developer ecosystem. For Qualcomm, comprehensive cooperation with Chinese enterprises is not only the most pragmatic business choice but also the make-or-break factor for its "agentic terminal" strategy.
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