Samsung Exynos chips to power budget phones from Xiaomi, OPPO

Samsung has a couple of Exynos chips lined-up for release in the coming days and Qualcomm is all set to launch its next flagship silicon in December. While Exynos doesn’t command the kind of sales Qualcomm or say MediaTek processors do, it is making subtle inroads to create a presence. After testing waters with its own devices and Vivo sharing some load, Samsung is now planning to supply a few Exynos processors to Xiaomi, OPPO and continued supply for Vivo.

As Huawei, which uses its Kirin processors, battles US trade restrictions, the gates are open for Samsung. The South Korean tech giant is leveraging ever possibility that comes its way to present itself up there with the likes of Qualcomm and MediaTek – as a worthy alternative other OEMs can bank on.

Xiaomi and OPPO have majority relied on MediaTek and Qualcomm chips in the past. With Huawei in troubled waters now, undercutting cost and delivering budget smartphones to fill the void would be a good strategy, and in that plane, the cost-effective Exynos chipsets have attracted the Chinese phone makers.

As reported by Business Korea, Samsung LSI, the division that develops Exynos chipsets, has reduced the number of Exynos processor offered to Galaxy smartphones over concerns of profit margins and is now seeking new partners. Vivo has been using Exynos 980 and Exynos 880 chipsets in some of its smartphones, and starting 2021, Xiaomi and OPPO’s budget devices will come with low-end Exynos processors under the hood.

Reportedly, the new mid-range chipset Exynos 1080 is on the horizon. Samsung could launch the chipset in China on November 12. The chip is produced using 5nm microfabrication process and comes with Coretex A78 CPU and Mali G78 GPU. There is no information on whether this upcoming SoC will be supplied to the Chinese smartphone makers anytime soon.