Samsung clinches deal to make Snapdragon 750 chipsets
Samsung seems to be winning important chip making contracts over the past few months. While it hasn’t been able to win back contracts from Apple just yet, Samsung’s chip manufacturing arm has reportedly clinched the deal to make the Snapdragon 750 processor from Qualcomm. The upcoming chipset is expected to be used in premium mid-range smartphones.
According to a report coming out of South Korea, Samsung Foundry will make Snapdragon 750 chipsets using its 8nm FinFET process. The value of the deal isn’t known yet, though. The upcoming 5G chipset will reportedly be used in the Galaxy A42 5G and the Xiaomi Mi 10 Lite 5G. Both these smartphones are expected to be launched towards the end of 2020.
The South Korean tech giant recently won chip making contracts to make Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 875 chips using the 5nm EUV process, Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series GPUs using the 8nm process, and IBM’s POWER10 data center chip using the 7nm process. Industry insiders say that multiple Qualcomm deals are the result of Samsung’s technological prowess and better prices.
Samsung will reportedly spend $8.6 billion every year to develop and improve its chip technologies and to buy new equipment. Although the South Korean firm was a latecomer to the foundry industry, it is competing closely with TSMC, the current market leader. According to TrendForce, Samsung has a 17.4% share of the global foundry market and its expected revenue for Q3 2020 is $3.67 billion.
