Qualcomm is the clear market leader in the ARM space and few competitors can even come close in terms of overall shipments, design wins and performance.

Small wonder then that Qualcomm SoCs currently power more than 500 devices on the market. In a recent interview with Electronics Weekly, Qualcomm senior business development manager Julian Harris pointed out that the company has more than 425 design wins in the Android world alone.

“Qualcomm powers a lot of these devices - we currently supply to over 70 manufacturers who have produced more than 500 announced/commercial Snapdragon-based devices so far,” said Harris.

He went on to point out that the Snapdragon SoC family evolved quickly, from the original S1 to next generation 800 and 600 series processors, based on Krait 300 and Krait 400 cores and set to appear later this year. Back at CES Qualcomm announced 50+ design wins for next generation Snapdragons, but details are still sketchy.

Harris spoke in great length about Qualcomm’s developer relations and software development kits (SDKs). He pointed out that the Snapdragon SDK is currently available for select Snapdragon chips, including current-gen MSM8960 and APQ8064 chips.

“Over time, it will support all Snapdragon processors; for lower-end chipsets, it will support the subset of features that are included with these chipsets,” said Harris. “We also have SDKs for Vuforia, our vision-based Augmented Reality (AR) platform; AllJoyn, our open-source peer-to-peer connectivity software framework; Adreno, which allows games developers and publishers to check performance and tweak the gameplay and user experience on their products; as well as Gimbal and FastCV.”

Harris pointed out that Qualcomm aims to prove developers with plenty of support in an effort to reduce development time and costs. One aspect of Qualcomm’s efforts is rather interesting for fledgling developers – the company has started staging competitions and handing out plenty of cash and prized to developers who prove they have the right stuff.

More here.