Samsung Foundry has been trying very hard to compete against TSMC, the undisputed contract chip manufacturing leader, particularly on the advanced nodes. Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent every year by top chip designers like Qualcomm, NVIDIA, AMD, and many more to have their chips made at foundries, since they don’t have their own.
Samsung has been trying to get a piece of this pie for the longest time but its market share still pales in comparison to TSMC, which has taken the bulk of orders for the 3nm process, including from companies that have previously used Samsung’s fabs. So even though the head of Samsung’s mobile division TM Roh made an in-person appearance at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit 2024 last week, it’s hard to think he wouldn’t have felt upset at some level with the foundry business.
Qualcomm has previously used Samsung’s foundries to get its chips made. As one of the top suppliers of flagship mobile chips, any fab that gets Qualcomm orders stands to make a boatload of money, to put it delicately. That boatload has been going TSMC’s way in recent years amid concerns about the competitiveness of Samsung Foundry on advanced nodes, particularly related to yields. TSMC will be making all of Qualcomm’s newly unveiled Snapdragon 8 Elite chips which will power tens of millions of Android flagship phones that came out later this year and well into next year.
It was rumored for months now that Samsung will use the Exynos 2500 in some variants of the Galaxy S25 series. This chip is Samsung’s answer to the Snapdragon 8 Elite and is similarly made on the 3nm process, however, this chip is being made by Samsung Foundry instead of TSMC. According to recent reports, the yields of Samsung Foundry’s 3nm process are so low that it can’t even produce the chip at the volume that Samsung’s mobile division needs to put them in the millions of Galaxy S25 and S25+ units it will ship.
This has forced the mobile division’s hand and left it with no option but to go Snapdragon 8 Elite-only for the entire Galaxy S25 series, as more recent reports have claimed. The unfortunate reality now is that Samsung needs Qualcomm for top-of-the-line chipsets simply because the foundry can’t bring to life what the semiconductor division creates. This makes Qualcomm a very important partner for the mobile division, and TM Roh traveling all the way to Maui for the Snapdragon Summit to just spend a few minutes on stage where he made no announcements of substance, shows that the gesture had more to do with seeing and being seen at the event.
Qualcomm CEO Christiano Amon spoke at length about the company’s partnerships during the keynote on the first day, highlighting all of the industry-leading work that the company does in collaboration with companies like Microsoft, Meta, and of course, Samsung. “We love Samsung” were the exact words he used to welcome TM Roh as he walked on stage. Qualcomm has used Samsung Foundry in the past and it would do so again if its requirements were met. Having no other option than TSMC to have its chips made isn’t an ideal scenario for Qualcomm either because it would likely have little room to negotiate on pricing, a process that’s highly lucrative and incredibly secretive in this industry.
Imagine how significant that moment could have been for Samsung for Roh to declare proudly on stage at the Snapdragon Summit that Qualcomm’s latest flagship chip, which would be used in Samsung’s upcoming flagship phone, was made by Samsung Foundry. It would have given more substance to Roh’s appearance at the keynote and would have similarly signified Samsung’s importance for Qualcomm as well, beyond where it currently stands.
Instead with the foundry division dropping the ball, Roh was left with little to work with to highlight all of the incredible work that the company has done and how that enables Qualcomm’s products to achieve their true potential. So yeah, I’d be upset too.
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