Despite Samsung's plan to use Snapdragon 865 on the majority of Galaxy S11 units that will hit the market in Q1 2020, the South Korean company is not getting a return of favor from Qualcomm. It appeared that the maker of Snapdragon SoCs is not ready for Samsung to have a peek on its intellectual properties.
For the wholesale production of Snapdragon 865, Qualcomm is said to be favoring Taiwanese firm TSMC, also a manufacturing partner of Apple. The decision can be characterized as wholly strategic on the part of Qualcomm, meaning the chipmaker is merely protecting its own interest for shutting out Samsung.
"The decision of Qualcomm, the global AP market leader, is to keep Samsung Electronics at bay by not sharing its intellectual properties related to flagship APs," Business Korea reported.
Even as the Snapdragon 865 maker will want to award bulk orders to Samsung, the concern remains that the Korean firm will gain unwanted access to Qualcomm's trade secrets.
For example, if Samsung will be tapped to take charge of the 865 chip mass production, Qualcomm will be forced to share the application processor's chip design drawings and other sensitive information pertaining to the mobile chip technology.
Clearly, this is something that Qualcomm is not prepared to do at the moment. That's because the company sees Samsung as a major competitor, and rightly so because the device maker has its own Exynos mobile processor that powers the Galaxy flagship smartphones in select markets.
It should be noted that Samsung has been honest enough that Exynos remains inferior to Snapdragon, which is the reason why the Galaxy maker will want the 865 on most Galaxy S11 units that will be shipped out in 2020.
This admission by Samsung, however, justified the decision by Qualcomm to make the fabrication of Snapdragon 865 off-limits to the South Korean tech giant.
Fortunately though for Samsung, the company will take part in the large-scale manufacture of Snapdragon 765 and Snapdragon 765G. This development will at least enable the company to catch up on TSMC, which has been scooping huge contracts coming from Apple and Qualcomm, WCCFTech said in a report.
The Snapdragon 765 is not exactly the 2020 pride of Qualcomm but it likely will be the popular choice by OEMs specializing on mid-range handsets powered by the Android operating system. Given the huge popularity of mid-range smartphones in Asia, Europe, and other key markets, mainly because these devices are affordable, Samsung in effect has a lucrative contract to look forward to, that is if Qualcomm will not have a change of heart.
