Stepping Up Efforts to Overtake Qualcomm
Samsung Electronics is stepping up its efforts to overtake Qualcomm, the world's number-one AP manufacturer as the Korean semiconductor giant successfully develop sales channels mostly to Chinese smartphone companies for Exynos, an its own-developed AP.
According to industry sources on January 21, China's smartphone maker Meizu loaded Samsung Exinos 7872 AP in its recently launched smartphone model 'M6s'.
This AP produced via 14-nano FinFet process has a hexa-core (six processing circuits) CPU composed of two units of 2.0 GHz ARM Cortex-A73 and four units of 1.6 GHz ARM Cortex and an LTE communication modem which can realize a download speed of up to 300Mbps and an upload speed of up to 150Mbps.
Announcing mass-production of the EXINOS 7872 model on January 17, Samsung Electronics explained that they doubled the product’s speed compare to previous single-core APs. EXINOS 7872 also supports not only Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 but out-of-focus photography and dual-camera functions available on premium smartphones.
In addition to Samsung APs, Meizu applied components from Samsung to 16-megapixel cameras on the back of the M6s. The Chinese smartphone company has earned a reputation as "the second Xiaomi" in China, raising its share of the Chinese smartphone market from 0.9% in 2014 to 4.2% in 2015 with smartphones priced at around 150,000 won. Recently, Meizu faltered somewhat but is dialing up its size while seeking to expand into overseas markets such as the US and India. The M6 was priced at US$155 to US$189.
Samsung Electronics, which supplied most of its APs for its own smartphones, is increasing its market share by supplying its APs to Chinese smartphone makers including Meizu. "Although it is difficult to disclose the names of companies, Samsung Electronics is supplying Exynos to a number of smartphone makers in China," said an industry official familiar with Samsung Electronics. In the smartphone industry, it is said that ZTE, Lenovo, and other smartphones in the industry were loaded with Exynos APs in addition to Meizu.
Samsung Electronics is aggressively conducting the AP business including the launch of high-performance AP Exynos 9810 to which the second-generation 10-nano process was recently applied.
According to market researcher Counterpoint Research, Qualcomm (42%), Apple (20%), Media Tech (14%), Samsung Electronics (11% ) and HiSilicon (8%) rounded up the top five of the world smartphone AP market in the third quarter of last year.