Samsung firing up new smartphone chip division to fight Apple dominance

AppleInsider · December 14, 2022 2:09PM

Samsung's Mobile Experience business has formed a team to develop a new smartphone application processor, likely to better compete with Apple Silicon.

Samsung wants its own chips

The company currently relies on the Samsung System LSI division for Exynos chips used in Galaxy smartphones. Other suppliers for the Mobile Experience business include Mediatek and Qualcomm.

Samsung's Mobile Experience (MX) business is responsible for managing the company's smartphone operations. The new application processor team will be part of MX.

The team will be led by executive vice president Choi Won-joon, who joined Samsung's mobile business in 2016 from Qualcomm, according to a report from The Elec on Wednesday.

It's possible that the new team could help optimize the Exynos line. More probably, Samsung likely wants to develop its own chips similar to Apple's custom-built chipsets.

Samsung's Galaxy S22 smartphone line has suffered from performance issues, requiring a software update for optimization that throttled the chip. The Exynos chips were reportedly the cause of the issues, and Samsung has opted to use Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip for the Galaxy S23, according to rumors.

That chip could be the second generation Snapdragon 8, which Qualcomm announced in November. The new chip reportedly falls behind Apple's A16 Bionic and A15 Bionic in most benchmarks.

Read on AppleInsider

avon b7 · December 14, 2022 4:16PM

Ah! Hot on the heels of a rumor claiming Samsung has licenced SoC related patents from Huawei.

melgross · December 14, 2022 5:10PM

This article is a bit off. Either the sources, if any were off, or it’s just his slant that’s off. Samsung needs to compete better against Qualcomm much more than it does Apple. Even Samsung uses Qualcomm chips in its top phones in most places, and that’s their problem. They need to get their own chips in all of their Galaxy phones. If their chips are “just” as good as Qualcomm’s, they can do that. They do t have to beat Apple’s chips.

9secondkox2 · December 14, 2022 5:57PM

The real takeaway: Apple better prepare to add more incentives and pay raises to the apple silicon team. Samsungs poachers are coming.

madbum · December 14, 2022 6:17PM

Didn’t Samsung already tried this with Exnos chips?

payeco · December 14, 2022 11:01PM

“Samsung fires loads of cash down the toilet.”

payeco · December 14, 2022 11:03PM

9secondkox2 said:

The real takeaway: Apple better prepare to add more incentives and pay raises to the apple silicon team. Samsungs poachers are coming.

Maybe. Where is this chip division going to be located? Unless it’s in the Bay Area I don’t see a lot of engineers jumping ship to move themselves and/or their family to South Korea unless the pay is astronomical.

red oak · December 15, 2022 12:48AM

LoL

davidw · December 15, 2022 1:12AM

"Samsung firing up new smartphone chip division to fight Apple dominance"

I don't see how Apple Silicon chips can be dominate. Apple own chips are only used in Apple devices and except for maybe the iPad, none of them really dominate their market. For sure, just Samsung alone, sells more phones than Apple and none of them are using Apple Silicon chips. It's not like other phone makers can choose to use Apple Silicon chips, over chips from other makers. And it's not like even if Samsung were to come out with a better chip, that Apple will ever choose to use it on their own devices, now that Apple is designing their own processors.

ktr · December 15, 2022 3:40AM

One thing apple has going for them, is they tie the os to the hardware. That’s one thing Samsung does not have.

Samsung firing up new smartphone chip division to fight Apple dominance

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"Samsung firing up new smartphone chip division to fight Apple dominance"