Qualcomm already tried a custom ARM chip and failed at it. That was Krait. The "secret sauce" behind the M1 is that it's actually more expensive than a similarly powerful Intel chip, and far, far more expensive than a typical ARM chip. The BOM cost for ARM Cortex is pennies, while M1 is easily 100x that. Apple is in the luxury business, so they can afford to spend a lot and take margins. Android phones are not luxury devices and spending as little as possible gets you poor performance and unimpressive results.
ARM's greatest marketing trick was convincing people their architecture was so much better while it was really just their interest in entering low margin industries to begin with that secured them the mobile market. Intel was never interested in low margins, so they never entered that market segment. If you want a good CPU, you have to spend money on it.
ARM's greatest marketing trick was convincing people their architecture was so much better while it was really just their interest in entering low margin industries to begin with that secured them the mobile market. Intel was never interested in low margins, so they never entered that market segment. If you want a good CPU, you have to spend money on it.