Qualcomm's partnership with Samsung signals end of Exynos chip on future Galaxy phones

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Qualcomm is set to become the dominant chipset for Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S series smartphones as Korean gaint's in-house Exynos chips continue to lose ground to their Snapdragon counterparts.

This year, the Samsung Galaxy S22 smartphones only used the Exynos 2200 in European markets. The rest of the Galaxy S22 series smartphones were powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset. In an earnings call, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon revealed that 75 percent of Galaxy S22 units were powered by the company's Snapdragon chip.

The CEO said the number would go up with the next year's launch of  Samsung Galaxy S23 series, strengthening reports that the Galaxy S23 series will exclusively use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC. Amon announced a multi-year agreement to power the Samsung Galaxy smartphones globally.

He said, “The way you should think about it is Snapdragon will power their Galaxy product line, their Galaxy flagship products. And what I can say at this point is we were 75 percent on Galaxy S22 before the agreement. You should be thinking about we're going to be much better than that on Galaxy S23 and beyond.”

Qualcomm’s partnership with Samsung “expands beyond Galaxy smartphones to include Galaxy books, Windows PCs, Galaxy tablets, future extended reality devices and other devices”, Amon said.

The news comes at a time of record-breaking sales for Samsung, driven by the Galaxy S22 series.

Samsung posted consolidated revenue of KRW 77.2 trillion, a record for the second quarter, and an operating profit of KRW 14.1 trillion, a 12 percent increase from a year earlier.

Supply disruptions in the first quarter were mostly resolved in the second quarter and Samsung secured its revenue growth year-on-year with solid sales of flagship models such as the Galaxy S22 series and Galaxy Tab S8 series.