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Samsung firing up new smartphone chip division to fight Apple dominance

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

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.



9 Comments

avon b7 20 Years · 8046 comments

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

melgross 20 Years · 33622 comments

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 8 Years · 3148 comments

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

Madbum 2 Years · 536 comments

Didn’t Samsung already tried this with Exnos chips?

payeco 17 Years · 581 comments

“Samsung fires loads of cash down the toilet.”