Samsung’s Galaxy S23 flagship series for 2023 could ditch the Exynos chipsets entirely and switch to Qualcomm, according to analyst Ming Chi-Kuo, who is best known for his insights on upcoming Apple products. This would mark a departure from the earlier strategy where Samsung launched the Qualcomm variants in the US and China, while markets like India usually got the Exynos variants.
However, since last year, there had been a shift in strategy. For one, India also got the Qualcomm-powered S22 variants. The Qualcomm vs Exynos ratio had moved heavily in favour of the former since last year. According to Kuo–who is an analyst for TFI Securities— “Qualcomm will likely be the sole processor supplier for Samsung Galaxy S23.”
He posted on his Twitter feed that this is likely because the next Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset is being made by TSMC with the 4-nanometer design. TSMC is the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. He added, “S23 may not adopt Exynos 2300 made by Samsung 4nm because it can’t compete with SM8550 in all aspects,” noting that Qualcomm’s chipset has “obvious advantages over in computing power and power efficiency,” over previous generations.
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1. Qualcomm will likely be the sole processor supplier for Samsung Galaxy S23 (vs. 70% shipment proportion for S22) thanks to the next flagship 5G chip SM8550 made by TSMC 4nm.— 郭明錤 (Ming-Chi Kuo) (@mingchikuo) July 8, 2022
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2. S23 may not adopt Exynos 2300 made by Samsung 4nm because it can’t compete with SM8550 in all aspects.
3. SM8550 is optimized for TSMC’s design rule, so it has obvious advantages over SM8450/SM8475 in computing power and power efficiency.— 郭明錤 (Ming-Chi Kuo) (@mingchikuo) July 8, 2022
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4. Qualcomm/SM8550 will gain more market share in the high-end Android market in 2023. The economic recession affects the high-end market less, so the market share gain will significantly benefit Qualcomm and TSMC.— 郭明錤 (Ming-Chi Kuo) (@mingchikuo) July 8, 2022
If Samsung does give up on its own Exynos chipset, it would also mean admitting that its chipset hasn’t quite been able to match up to the best of what Qualcomm has to offer. According to Kuo, he expects, “Qualcomm/SM8550” to gain more market share in the high-end Android segment in 2023. In his analysis, the “economic recession affects the high-end market less, so the market share gain will significantly benefit Qualcomm and TSMC.”
Samsung typically releases the S series in the first half of the year, which would be February 2023. The phones go on sale by early March. For now, Samsung is expected to launch its next line of foldable phones in the second half of 2022. We could see the new Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 make an appearance next month. The phones could come with the upgraded Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. Some reports suggest the Galaxy Z Fold 4 might not come with support for the S Pen, which is now included in the Galaxy S22 Ultra. The phone will also come with a thinner, more compact design.
