Samsung might have misplaced tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} because of its stuttering smartphone chip enterprise.
It’s common to search out smartphone fans and tech journalists grumbling about Samsung’s frequent option to go along with its personal customized Exynos chips for its flagship telephones. These chips, whereas succesful, are invariably inferior to Qualcomm’s off-the-shelf Snapdragon options, as utilized by most of Samsung’s rivals.
Nonetheless, a brand new declare from a longtime leaker seems to spell out in stark phrases why Samsung chooses to do enterprise this manner. It’s merely rather more costly to go the Qualcomm route.
Why Samsung goes with Exynos when it may well
Samsung was compelled to make use of Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon 8 Elite chip for all of its Samsung Galaxy S25 telephones because of poor manufacturing yields of its personal Exynos 2500 chip.
This resulted in constantly stellar efficiency throughout the board for Samsung’s flagship vary, which was nice for the shopper. Nonetheless, it additionally seems to have taken a severe toll on the funds of the world’s greatest smartphone maker.
In accordance with serial tipster Jukanlosreve, Samsung’s chip enterprise misplaced round $400 million purely from being compelled to take up Qualcomm’s off-the-shelf answer.

Luke Baker
Exynos return for the Galaxy S26
Given the surprising monetary loss detailed above, it ought to come as no shock to study that Samsung is relatively eager to get again on the Exynos practice. In accordance with the aforementioned leaker’s publish, the Exynos 2600 chip is on observe for use by Samsung in 2026.
The kicker right here is that, because of low yields, Samsung is as soon as once more set to separate its chip provision. Europeans will get the Exynos 2600 of their Samsung Galaxy S26 fashions, whereas prospects within the US and China will almost definitely get the identical telephones powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite 2.
As an trade supply factors out, “Qualcomm’s Snapdragon exhibits a ‘clear’ efficiency benefit over Exynos”. It’s a well-recognized story, and one which’s on the coronary heart of what annoys many about Samsung’s method.

Samsung
Why extra Exynos is best… sort of
As Apple and Google will inform you, it all the time makes monetary sense to convey elements in-house the place potential. Certainly, Samsung utilizing its personal chips isn’t actually the problem right here.
Moderately, it sticks within the craw when Samsung splits its chip provision in keeping with area. It invariably signifies that our US mates find yourself getting higher telephones than a lot of the remainder of the world, which actually doesn’t appear truthful.
In a sure respect, then, we’d relatively Samsung adopted Google’s lead and went all in with its Exynos chips, giving all of its prospects the identical degree of efficiency.