Igeekphone on June 27 news, Korean media FNN reported that Samsung’s Exynos 2500 chip can not meet mass production requirements because of low yield, so Samsung may cooperate with Mediatek to customize chips for the Galaxy S25 series mobile phones.
Exynos 2500 chip
Igeekphone reported on June 21 that Samsung Electronics’ Exynos 2500 chip is still slightly less than 20% yield, and it is not clear whether it can be used for Galaxy S25 series mobile phones in the future.
Korean media reported that Samsung Electronics generally will not begin mass production of mobile phone SoC until the chip yield exceeds 60%, and the current yield level is still far from this standard line.
Since Samsung Electronics has set the latest date for mass production of the Exynos 2500 chip by the end of this year, Samsung LSI has some time to improve the yield of the next generation flagship self-developed mobile SoC by September to October.
Alternative plan
Samsung has two solutions to the yield shortage:
The Galaxy S25 series phones are all equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 processor as standard
Samsung and Mediatek have teamed up to customize guet chips for the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ phones
The media believes that Samsung is more likely to choose the latter, one of the important factors is the price of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 processor, due to TSMC 3nm short supply caused a surge in price, supply chain news that Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 compared with the previous generation of offer 25%.
According to the news, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 based on the N3E process has taken the lead in raising its price, with a 25% increase over the previous generation’s offer, which is expected to exceed $250 (currently about 1815 yuan).
There is more evidence that Mediatek is offering its chipsets at a lower price than Qualcomm. According to the previously announced data for the first quarter of 2024, Mediatek shipped the highest chipset in the quarter, about 114 million pieces, but its profit was “only” $23 billion (about 167.348 billion yuan); While Qualcomm shipped 75 million chipsets in the same period, with a profit of $37 billion (currently about 269.212 billion yuan).
Samsung’s cooperation with Mediatek is also reasonable in the context of its own Exynos 2500 chip yield shortage and Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chip sharp price increases.