Samsung wins contract for the new Snapdragon X60’s production

World’s famous chip manufacturer, Qualcomm, has just announced the Snapdragon X60, a next-generation 5G modem that could have faster network speeds.

Now, Reuters has brought to our attention an important contract made between Samsung and Qualcomm concerning the production of the new X60 modem chips. This contract is useful for Samsung for gaining chip manufacturing market share against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (the TSMC).

Many people don’t know this, but Samsung is not only a world market leader in the smartphone and other electronic devices’ industry, but it is also the world’s second-biggest chip manufacturer. Samsung makes a good amount of its own mobile phone parts, it also exports chips for external customers, such as IBM, Nvidia and others.

Last year, Samsung decided to invest $116 billion to grow its share in the chip manufacturing market and to limit its dependence on the unstable market of memory chips while focusing on non-memory ones. Now it has won a contract, in which at least some of the Snapdragon X60 chips will be made in Samsung’s foundries.

Samsung’s rival in this arena, TSMC, held 52.7% market share for the fourth quarter of 2019, according to a research from TrendForce, while Samsung had 17.8%. TSMC won customers, such as Apple, with an older manufacturing technology, and now expects to work with a newer manufacturing process (the 5nm one), which provides more battery-efficient chips, and is estimated to make up 10% of the company’s revenue for this year.

Some sources state that TSMC will also fabricate some of Qualcomm’s chips, alongside Samsung. According to Reuters, no official confirmation on the matter has been issued yet.

However, Samsung is positive on being a strong competitor to TSMC, and Shawn Han, senior vice president at Samsung Foundry, said that they are planning to diversify customer applications in order to expand their 5nm mass production.