Apart from selling the highest amount of smartphones than any other mobile manufacturer, Samsung is also a major force in the component business, which includes application processors (AP), with the Korean manufacturer even building the processors Apple uses in its iPhones. However, a Korean report has revealed that things might not be going to well for Samsung in the mobile processor market, as its share of the market has continued to plummet over the last few quarters.
According to analysts, Samsung held 9.4 percent of the AP market in Q1 2013, but that share fell to just 6.8 in Q2, and now it stands at around 3.7 percent. To be honest, this doesn't come as surprising in the least – Samsung's own Exynos line of chips is used in its flagships but only in Asian markets/countries where 4G/LTE data isn't a thing yet, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips have pretty much taken over the market, being used in everything from mid-rangers to high-end flagships, including Samsung's own European/American variants.
Then there is also MediaTek, which is creating a name for itself in the budget mobile segment, with its dual- and quad-core chips providing cheap yet sufficient performance in almost every smartphone made by Chinese and Indian companies, and competing with them isn't exactly something Samsung can do as it only focuses on high-end processors. Couple that with Samsung's inability to make Exynos chips that support native LTE, and you can see how its market share in the processor market hasn't exactly been thriving over the previous few months (even MediaTek is reportedly ready to launch an LTE-capable processor).
It's clear to see that despite being efficient and powerful, Samsung's Exynos chipsets aren't going to do much good for the company, unless of course they can implement LTE in a proper manner. Since using their own chips is cheaper, giving up Exynos completely isn't an option Samsung will ever consider, but it's certain that they need to do something if they wish to be relevant in the mobile AP market in a few years. Maybe that Exynos 6 chip that is expected to debut in the Galaxy S5 will kick things off, eh?
