According to a new report from South Korean website The Elec, Samsung’s Mobile Experience (MX) Business has set up its own application processor (AP) team led by executive vice president and former Qualcomm employee Choi Won-joon. Anyone who follows Samsung’s mobile efforts closely might be puzzled by thus claim. After all, the company has been using its own Exynos chips in some of its phones for years. However, these chips are made by a separate division under the sprawling Samsung umbrella, Samsung System LSI. This latest move would essentially see Samsung’s smartphone division taking on the responsibility of producing its own mobile chips. The report mentions that there’s a possibility this new team will simply be tasked with optimising Samsung System LSI’s Exynos chips, which have notoriously underperformed their Qualcomm Snapdragon equivalents in recent years. While that sounds like a more internally harmonious solution, however, it’s also the less likely one. Earlier in the year, Samsung was forced to deny reports that it would be ditching its Exynos mobile chip business for its 2023 and 2024 flagship phones. It had been suggested by reputable sources that the Samsung Galaxy S23 would be powered exclusively by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Previous Galaxy S models have split the chip provision between Samsung and Qualcomm, but the Exynos chips have generally underperformed their Snapdragon equivalents. Samsung also reportedly struggled with low yields of its most recent high-end chip, the Exynos 2200.
