At $240, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 would be 20% higher than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. One possible reason for the price increase is the hike in the price of the silicon wafers used by TSMC to produce chips using its second-gen 3nm process node (N3E). This will be the first Snapdragon 8 flagship chip produced on the 3nm node and with the wafer prices doubling from $15K to $30K, a higher price would make sense.
Cowan’s BOM for the iPhone 16 Pro Max shows a $45 price for the A18 Pro AP. | Image credit-innoGyan
One reason for the wide discrepancy in pricing between Apple and Qualcomm is that the latter has to turn around and sell the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 to a buyer while pricing the chip high enough to make a decent profit. Apple, on the other hand, uses the chips that are built by TSMC for its own device which means there is one less tier of pricing required.
In addition, Qualcomm is debuting its own CPU cores for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 rather than licensing Cortex CPU cores from Arm. Looking to retrieve some of the costs to develop these cores could also result in higher pricing for Qualcomm’s flagship AP this year.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will be unveiled by Qualcomm during the Snapdragon Summit which will take place in Hawaii from October 21 through October 23rd.