Samsung Foundry has been finding it difficult to compete with TSMC. Some of the world's leading chip designers are opting for the latter to get their chips fabricated. This means that Samsung loses out on billions of dollars in business, despite having invested significant sums in its foundry to provide manufacturing capacity for advanced chips.
Qualcomm, which has previously used Samsung Foundry for its chips, was initially rumored to split orders for its latest mobile chipset between TSMC and Samsung. That's not the case, though. Qualcomm has confirmed that the 3nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is fabricated entirely at TSMC.
Samsung Foundry's yield troubles are nothing new
This is hardly surprising as this chipset's predecessor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, was also fabricated at TSMC. Reports of Samsung struggling with yields on the advanced process nodes are nothing new, and perhaps the issues are significant enough that companies like Qualcomm are deciding to forego the potential benefits of dual-sourcing and put all their eggs in TSMC's basket.
If some rumors are believed, things are even worse than expected. 3nm yields at Samsung Foundry are reportedly so low that the mobile division has to give up on its plans of using the Exynos 2500 in some variants of the Galaxy S25 series and potentially go Snapdragon 8 Elite only for the entire Galaxy S25 series due early next year.
If yields are so low that Samsung can't make enough of its own chipsets for its own flagship smartphone lineup, it's hardly a vote of confidence for a company like Qualcomm that provides chipsets that most Android flagships use to trust the manufacturing of their key product to Samsung.
Disclaimer: Qualcomm is hosting a large group of international media for the Snapdragon Summit 2024 from October 21-23 in Hawaii, including SamMobile. All opinions and analyses remain our own with Qualcomm receiving no advance preview or exercising any control over our coverage.
