Reports have come out that Qualcomm is planning to significantly hike the cost of its next processor: the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2. If Samsung wishes to stick with Snapdragon next year then the iPhone will have a massive advantage when it comes to cost. Apple’s flagship is already cheaper than Samsung’s (discounting any deals or trade-ins) and the gap threatens to widen even more.
Meanwhile Samsung Foundry is collapsing and is unable to achieve profitable yields for chip manufacturing. This has led to internal talks at Samsung about outsourcing Exynos production to TSMC similar to Apple’s approach for Apple silicon. But there is another alternative: MediaTek.
MediaTek can save the day
Over the past year MediaTek has approached Samsung with discounted offers if it’s allowed to supply chips for the Galaxy phones. Now that Qualcomm is making its offering much more expensive and Exynos still fails to impress, MediaTek may be Samsung’s only hope.That or cost-cutting. Samsung may have to negotiate better deals with domestic component manufacturers for its future phones. If it fails there then it may just have to opt for cheaper displays and cameras instead. The company cannot afford to drastically increase the price of its flagships when they’re already more expensive than the competition.
Korean media suggested that if the price of Qualcomm’s 8 Elite 2 rises, using MediaTek’s Dimensity could be a viable alternative.
They also noted that if the Galaxy S26, like the S25, exclusively uses the 8 Elite 2, cost-cutting in areas such as displays and cameras will be…
— Jukanlosreve (@Jukanlosreve) December 4, 2024