Title Samsung and Qualcomm are at war over AP
Date   2015-02-06                                           

Memo
Samsung and Qualcomm are at war over APs

 The competition between Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm over smartphone application processors (AP) has been ignited. Public attention is drawn to whether SEC will be able to destroy the stronghold that Qualcomm has had for a long time with the Exynos 7420 based on the 14nm process.
As the 64bit AP began to be installed in premium smartphones, such as the Galaxy S6 and the G Flex 2, this year, an uncompromising match between the ‘Snap Dragon 810’ of Qualcomm, which has been dominating the market for a long time, and the ‘Exynos 7420’ of Samsung Electronics is predicted.
SEC is planning to drastically increase the use of its ‘Exynos 7420’ in its strategic model Galaxy S6 this year. Qualcomm’s ‘Snap Dragon 810’ was applied to the G Flex 2, recently released by LG Electronics, and Xiaomi’s Mi Note Pro. The two APs will also compete fiercely to find their way into other manufacturers’ premium smartphones scheduled to be unveiled in February or March.
Looking at the disclosed specifications, e.g. the CPU speed, process and power consumption, Samsung’s Exynos 7420 has the upper hand. The operating speed of Exynos is 2.1㎓, faster than that of Qualcomm’s Snap Dragon 810 (1.6㎓). As the 14nm technology is applied, it consumes less power than the Qualcomm chip based on the 20nm technology. However, only Qualcomm can offer the communication modem and AP in one chip.
“It will be possible to check the advantages and disadvantages besides the disclosed specifications only after the phones are released,” said an industry insider. “However, the superiority in specifications will definitely give a marketing opportunity to Samsung Electronics’ AP.”
Recently, the industry atmosphere is quite favorable to SEC. For starters, the company has great confidence in the performance of the ‘Exynos 7,’ which the company developed on its own using the 14nm FinFET process. Some forecast that SEC will recover from the poor performance of the ‘Exynos 5410’ in just 2 years and get the better of its rival Qualcomm in 2015. The securities industry predicts that Samsung’s system LSI will do a fine business this year thanks to the Exynos 7420. As the new AP has better performance than the market anticipated, and Samsung won the new AP foundry orders from Apple by means of the 14nm process technology, the performance of its foundry segment will also improve. The securities industry predicted that, though the system LSI business marked a KRW1 trillion deficit last year, it will run a surplus of KRW100 billion this year.


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