Samsung enters long-term partnership with Qualcomm for Snapdragon chips

Samsung has reportedly signed a multi-year deal with Qualcomm for the Snapdragon for Galaxy chips for its upcoming flagships. During the earnings call for Q1 2024, Qualcomm confirmed the matter saying “We’re also announcing that we extended a multiyear agreement with Samsung relating to Snapdragon platforms for flagship Galaxy smartphone launches starting in 2024. The extended agreement demonstrates the value of Snapdragon 8, our technology leadership, and our successful long-term strategic partnership with Samsung.”

People still prefer Qualcomm chips inside their Galaxy flagships, and this is where the multi-year partnership between the two giants becomes good news. It means we will continue to see Qualcomm’s absolute best offering inside Galaxy devices for at least some more years.

However, we will likely continue to see Exynos chips alongside its Snapdragon counterpart as well

This multi-year deal starts this year and the first product with the partnership is the Galaxy S24 series devices. The Galaxy S24 Ultra ships with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy SoC all over the world. However, the base Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus still push the in-house Exynos 2400 SoC in many regions, just like what we used to see in the past before the Galaxy S23 series, which was powered solely by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip.

Samsung has been reducing the performance gap between Qualcomm chips and its in-house Exynos offering over the past few generations and the Exynos 2400 is a lot closer in performance as compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy. It is unlikely to see Samsung leaving all its development behind and going solely with the quite expensive flagship Snapdragon chips for all the models of its upcoming flagships in all regions.

Given the rumors regarding Samsung’s anticipated Galaxy-exclusive chip prove to be true, Samsung might just continue to use its in-house offering, the Exynos 2500, inside the base and Plus models of the upcoming series in regions like the EU. Nonetheless, we can anticipate the future Ultra models to ship with the future Snapdragon chips throughout the world, just like the Galaxy S24 series.