Samsung might not be able to avoid price hikes for the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S26 lines
Qualcomm is reportedly charging up to $190 for each Snapdragon 8 Elite application processor (AP) that will be used to power the Galaxy S25 flagship series that is expected to be unveiled next month. As we've noted before, this might end up leading to a price hike for the line. It will be the first Snapdragon AP to be manufactured using TSMC's 3nm process node and there is also the chance that TSMC will raise its price to build the SoC. Rumors call for the foundry to hike pricing for advanced 3nm/5nm production next year by 10% thanks to demand for AI-related chips.
While Samsung would typically use its own Exynos 2500 chipset on most Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ models outside of the U.S., Canada, and China, Samsung Foundry has been unable to get its 3nm yield above the 70% usually needed to justify the mass-production of a chip. The yield is the percentage of usable chips produced from a silicon wafer.
With Samsung Foundry's rumored 3nm yield in a range between 20% and 30%, it would require the use of too many extra expensive silicon wafers to produce enough Exynos 2500 chips to cover the number Samsung would need for its 2025 flagship series. As a result, the Exynos 2500 AP will not be used on the Galaxy S25 series although Samsung hopes to use the chip on the Galaxy Z Flip 7 and the Galaxy z Flip FE.
So this year, Samsung is expected to pack the Snapdragon 8 Elite AP into all of its Galaxy S25 series phones. It's hard to see how a price hike can be avoided this year. If there is some good news that will come out of this, the Snapdragon 8 Elite AP packs a powerful punch with two Prime Cores running at a clock speed of 4.32GHz and six Performance Cores running as fast as 3.53GHz. There are no efficiency cores. MediaTek successfully did away with efficiency cores with the Dimensity 9300 and Dimensity 9400 so there is some precedent here.
Samsung will also have to make a tough decision on the pricing for the Galaxy S26 series in 2026 if the Exynos 2600 runs into the same problem. Samsung doesn't want to deal with the embarrassment of needing TSMC to build an Exynos chipset but truthfully, Samsung Foundry has had problems with low yields for some time now. You might recall that low yields for Samsung Foundry's 4nm node forced Qualcomm to move production of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 to TSMC where it was slightly revised and given the new moniker of Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.
So the pressure is on Samsung Foundry to fix its yield problem. It already has cost Sammy the opportunity to build the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2. As of the third quarter of this year, TSMC had a 64% share of the contract foundry industry compared to Samsung Foundry's 12%.
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