Samsung firing up new smartphone chip division to fight Apple dominance

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.