Qualcomm is considering a dual-sourcing strategy to cut down the cost of the 2025 Snapdragon flagship for mobile.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 isn’t even official yet but news of its successor has already surfaced. Tech giant Qualcomm is open for collaboration with chipset makers to help produce the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5.
According to reports, Qualcomm’s CEO, Cristiano Amon, is seriously considering a collaboration with Samsung. In a media briefing held in Taipei, Taiwan, Amon expressed his contemplation of a dual-sourcing production strategy. This suggests that Samsung and TSMC will work together to produce the chipset.
The idea of dual-sourcing isn’t a surprise because Qualcomm entered the mobile PC industry with its Snapdragon X Elite series, which uses TSMC’s process. The production demand naturally increased and that will influence other line-ups of the company.
Another thing to consider is Samsung’s progress in developing its own 2-nm process and Qualcomm will certainly benefit from that. Qualcomm could reassign some of its production volumes to Samsung and even push for the 2-nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5.
If Qualcomm goes with this plan, the production cost should drop. But will consumers feel that drop too?
Anyway, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is reported to be slightly better than the Apple A17 Pro with 4.2 GHz max clock speed.
This upcoming flagship mobile CPU is expected to be announced in this year’s Snapdragon Summit in October.