It was not long ago when Qualcomm and Samsung locked horns over the Snapdragon 810 chipset (more details about Snapdragon 810). Qualcomm in January this year, revealed that a major manufacturer has ceased using the 810 chipsets, and later Samsung announced that the S6 will be integrated with their own Exynos processors instead. Though Qualcomm did not announce the company’s name, but it was not hard to connect the dots between the two stories.
Qualcomm is a known manufacturer of processor chips and wireless modems to a host of phone makers (OEMs), and the Snapdragon line-up of SoCs provides complete solution to both the requirements of modem and chipset.
Qualcomm also supplies the wireless modem (3G, LTE etc) to Apple, which is also known for building its own Ax line of SoC . Interestingly, Chipworks, a consultancy firm recently discussed that the Samsung Galaxy S6 uses a Samsung modem along with Exynos processor, which means that Samsung’s Galaxy S6 is Qualcomm-free (at least in many markets), which is not a small feat to achieve given Qualcomm’s dominance in the LTE market.
Keeping all the issues in the backdrop, Qualcomm has come a long way as many flagship devices are coming using with its Snapdragon 810 chipset, including the HTC One M9 and upcoming Lumia phones. But losing the Samsung Galaxy S6 turned out to be bigger than observers expected for Qualcomm, since Samsung chose to use its own wireless modem as well.
Qualcomm has witnessed a massive growth last year as its Snapdragon 800 and 805 chipsets were used in every other device. The Snapdragon 810 chipset is also being used in most of the flagships this year. Having said all that, only time will tell how negatively this separation will affect both the companies. The Snapdragon 820, which is expected to come with a custom CPU core and an updated graphics processor should help Qualcomm stage a come back – there is no Snapdragon 815. The thing is: Snapdragon 820 sampling will happen this summer, for products in 2016.
Filed in . Read more about Galaxy S6, Qualcomm and Samsung. Source: blogs.wsj
