Qualcomm hasn't made a single Qualcomm core since Apple released their first aarch64 SoC. Qualcomm had zero competition and decided to not really work on anything. Apple blindsided it with its very competitive aarch64 cores, Qualcomm had nothing to show, so they switched to ARM's core design.
Customers kept paying Qualcomm for their SoC with ARM designed cores, so once again, Qualcomm had no reason to actually do anything but sit on their patents.
Intel had a similar story, since Sandy Bridge "x86_64" part of CPU barely changed, most of the performance gain was somewhere from better process, more custom instructions (avx2, etc.), higher TDP (since ryzen).
It's not ARM vs x86, it's Apple ARM cores vs everyone elses cores.
Customers kept paying Qualcomm for their SoC with ARM designed cores, so once again, Qualcomm had no reason to actually do anything but sit on their patents.
Intel had a similar story, since Sandy Bridge "x86_64" part of CPU barely changed, most of the performance gain was somewhere from better process, more custom instructions (avx2, etc.), higher TDP (since ryzen).
It's not ARM vs x86, it's Apple ARM cores vs everyone elses cores.