Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit 2023 is underway in Hawaii, entering its second day today following the announcement of the company's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset yesterday. Devices powered by this new chipset will be out next year. Some manufacturers have already gone ahead and teased their Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered phones that are due in the coming months.
If the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 sounds familiar, that's because we've talking about it for quite some time now. This is the chipset that Samsung's is expected to use for the Galaxy S24 series alongside the Exynos 2400. As we all know, and perhaps even fear on some level, Exynos is making a return on the Galaxy S24 series next year. How it stacks up against Qualcomm's latest chipset, which has some lofty claims behind it, is something that we're impatient to find out.
Remember, Qualcomm is not in the business of making devices itself. Even though there are now more than 3 billion devices powered by Snapdragon, none of them are made by Qualcomm. It simply provides the chips that smartphone, tablet, PC and other device manufacturers buy to build those products. As you'd expect, many of these partners were mentioned during the Snapdragon Summit 2023, since Qualcomm wanted to showcase that some of the biggest companies across the globe are already looking forward to sell devices powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
Where was Samsung? Not only is the world's leading Android manufacturer but it's the dominant manufacturer overall, shipping more devices than even Apple every single year. Many of those devices run on Snapdragon chips. The current-gen Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 that are expected to hit 15 million units sold this year? All powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy. The entire Galaxy S23 series, expected to sell over 20 million units, powered exclusively by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy. Only across these two devices, Qualcomm has sold more than 35 million chips to just one client, Samsung.
It's unusual to talk about everything that Qualcomm's partners have achieved with its products without mentioning Samsung's devices. Take the Galaxy S23 Ultra, for example. It's evidently the smartphone of the year in 2023. There's no other device that can match the level that it's at and many of its capabilities are directly a result of what Qualcomm made possible with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy.
We typically see partners that work so closely together pop up at each other's events to hype up their collaboration and give a glimpse of what's to come. No wonder, then, that the likes of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sent in recorded comments for the Snapdragon Summit, along with top executives from other Qualcomm partners such as Google, Lenovo, HP, Bose, etc.
However, this is not something that we typically see from Samsung MX. Obviously, the decision to be featured at Snapdragon Summit isn't one that Qualcomm can force Samsung's hand on. The Korean giant has to make that decision itself and decide whether it wants to tease anything about its next-gen devices at Qualcomm's event. Evidently, that's not something that Samsung is interested in. Perhaps Samsung feels its brand value is vastly superior to all of the other OEMs that get mentioned here, so it would rather not be clubbed together with them. That's partly true, Samsung does wipe the floor with many of them in major markets.
Samsung has always done a tightrope walk to balance its inclination to produce high-end Exynos chipsets for flagships and the necessity to utilize Snapdragon chipsets as well. Last year's decision to skip a generation for the Exynos and go all Snapdragon for the Galaxy S23 wouldn't have been an easy one at Samsung. It's no secret that manufacturers like to dual-source, they don't want to rely on just one manufacturer because it provides the latter more leverage.
So even though Exynos is the underdog in comparison to Snapdragon, it's understandable why Samsung is willing to continue using Exynos. It serves multiple purposes. Exynos chipsets are a way for Samsung to showcase its foundry capabilities to other chip developers who require foundry capacity to bring their products to market. It's also a matter of pride for Samsung to use a chipset that it has made in its top-of-the-line device. There's also the fact that it's probably much cheaper for Samsung to have an Exynos-Snapdragon split instead of paying whatever price Qualcomm charges for its latest chipset.
That's the obstacle Samsung has to navigate and if this cautious approach to how it highlights its partnership with Qualcomm is any indication, it could have negative implications for both companies and Samsung's customers, in that Samsung could ultimately decide to go full Exynos, possibly out of pure commercial reasons. Come to think about it, has Qualcomm fumbled the bag the victory it scored over Exynos this year?
It got the opportunity to put a Snapdragon chipset on the best premium Android device lineup of 2023, the Galaxy S23 series. Perhaps it didn't push as hard as it could have to retain that exclusivity and not give Samsung a reason to revert back to Exynos. While what Qualcomm charges its clients for chipsets remains a mystery, there may have been many ways for Qualcomm to sweeten the deal for Samsung so that even the Galaxy S24 was all Snapdragon. On some level, Exynos is a hedge bet from Samsung so that it has a decent enough high-end flagship to fall back on should it not make commercial sense to continue sourcing from Qualcomm.
This is certainly one of the more unique partnerships that Qualcomm has. It's willing to play ball and make a special version of its flagship chipset for Samsung, a courtesy not extended to other partners, but it's ostensibly not chasing after Samsung hard enough to get all of its business. Whatever commercial considerations may be behind this, it will be interesting to see what the future holds, particularly once the Exynos 2400 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 go head to head. We'll find out soon enough. Samsung is slated to unveil the Galaxy S24 series in January next year.
