Samsung, which has been making its own line-up of mobile processors under the Exynos brand, has now entered the top 5 rankings in the global smartphone application processor market. The South Korean electronics giant stood fourth in the global rankings last year after Qualcomm, Apple, and MediaTek.
Qualcomm still stands as the largest mobile processor maker with a market share of 42 percent, while Apple and MediaTek have market shares of 21 percent and 19 percent, respectively. Samsung stood fourth and Spreadtrum stood fifth in the smartphone processor space last year.
Samsung managed to ship around 50 million units of Exynos chipsets in 2015. This might be the direct effect of Samsung's decision to increase the usage of its homegrown processors in its mobile devices, including mid-range and entry-level smartphones as well as wearable devices like smartwatches.
DRMeXchange estimates that Samsung had used Exynos chipsets in at least 15 percent of its smartphones last year. Samsung also provides Exynos chipsets to other smartphone brands such as Meizu. Moreover, it also manufactures mobile processors for the likes of Apple and Qualcomm.
According to Strategy Analytics, Qualcomm is facing strong competition from Samsung as the latter is vertically integrated from the semiconductor division to the smartphone division. The global smartphone processor market declined 4 percent year-over-year in 2015 to reach $20 billion.
