Samsung ditches Qualcomm for Infineon chipsets
Only Samsung knows the real story behind its recent move to acquire more chipsets from Germany’s Infineon Technologies, but it looks like the Samsung-Infineon relationship is only going to get stronger, if only for now.
Before Infineon, Samsung’s chipset needs used to be serviced by US-based Qualcomm. But Samsung suddenly decided in April that Qualcomm just won’t cut it any more, and that it needs to source things to a new company – that is, Infineon – if it’s ever going to achieve full diversity in their mobile phone offerings. Or something like that.
In fairness to Qualcomm, they’ve done a pretty good job in helping Samsung climb up fast in the consumer handset market, but a keen selling point that Infineon has and they don’t is cheaper price points. That’s why Samsung seems like it would rather plan to develop more Infineon-based mobile phones than keep wasting time in fruitless price negotiations with Qualcomm.
A senior Samsung Electronics executive commented recently that, “While they’re more than 20 percent cheaper, Infineon’s chipsets are not inferior to Qualcomm’s in quality.” Well if that’s the case then, it really will come down to who offers the more affordable chipsets. And by far, in this round, Infineon has won. It would be interesting to see what kind of handsets would materialize from the Samsung-Infineon team up, though.
Via Chosun
Enjoyed the story? Get the news and updates as we publish them. For instant updates as we press the "Publish" button, click here to follow us on Twitter . To subscribe to RSS News Feed click here , for daily e-mail updates click here .If you liked the post, you might find these interesting too:
- Qualcomm unveils new chipsets, for both high-end and cheap (under $150) smartphones
- Verizon’s iPhone to use a Qualcomm chip
- Samsung will pay $1.3 billion for Qualcomm patent licenses
- 3G iPhone already developed, says iPhone chip-maker Infineon
- Infineon Technologies introduces cheaper and yet more efficient mobile phone chips
« Gresso’s White Diamond Collection for the affluent19 new handsets from NTT DoCoMo include LG Wine, Nokia NM706i »