Samsung may have lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to its stuttering smartphone chip business.
It’s not unusual to find smartphone enthusiasts and tech journalists grumbling about Samsung’s frequent choice to go with its own custom Exynos chips for its flagship phones. These chips, while capable, are invariably inferior to Qualcomm’s off-the-shelf Snapdragon alternatives, as used by most of Samsung’s rivals.
However, a new claim from an established leaker appears to spell out in stark terms why Samsung chooses to do business this way. It’s simply much more expensive to go the Qualcomm route.
Why Samsung goes with Exynos when it can
Samsung was forced to use Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Elite chip for all of its Samsung Galaxy S25 phones due to poor production yields of its own Exynos 2500 chip.
This resulted in consistently stellar performance across the board for Samsung’s flagship range, which was great for the customer. However, it also appears to have taken a serious toll on the finances of the world’s biggest smartphone maker.
According to serial tipster Jukanlosreve, Samsung’s chip business lost around $400 million purely from being forced to take up Qualcomm’s off-the-shelf solution.
Luke Baker
Exynos return for the Galaxy S26
Given the shocking financial loss detailed above, it should come as no surprise to learn that Samsung is rather keen to get back on the Exynos train. According to the aforementioned leaker’s post, the Exynos 2600 chip is on track to be used by Samsung in 2026.
The kicker here is that, due to low yields, Samsung is once again set to split its chip provision. Europeans will get the Exynos 2600 in their Samsung Galaxy S26 models, while customers in the US and China will most likely get the same phones powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite 2.
As an industry source points out, “Qualcomm’s Snapdragon shows a ‘clear’ performance advantage over Exynos”. It’s a familiar story, and one that’s at the heart of what annoys many about Samsung’s approach.
Samsung
Why more Exynos is better… kind of
As Apple and Google will tell you, it always makes financial sense to bring components in-house where possible. Indeed, Samsung using its own chips isn’t really the issue here.
Rather, it sticks in the craw when Samsung splits its chip provision according to region. It invariably means that our US friends end up getting better phones than much of the rest of the world, which really doesn’t seem fair.
In a certain respect, then, we’d rather Samsung followed Google’s lead and went all in with its Exynos chips, giving all of its customers the same level of performance.
