Galaxy S23: Good news for German buyers

Samsung and Qualcomm are expanding their partnership and this has immediate implications for Samsung’s upcoming premium smartphones. In the future, these will only be delivered worldwide with Snapdragon processors from Qualcomm. The new agreement, Qualcomm emphasizes, also includes PCs, tablets and extended reality devices.

So far, Samsung has followed a two-pronged strategy, using Exynos processors developed by Samsung in European models and Snapdragon CPUs in devices for other markets.

With the Galaxy S22, for example, it was the Exynos 2200 in Europe and for the rest of the world the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 from Qualcomm, also manufactured using the 4-nanometer process. We summarize how this affects performance in the following post: Galaxy S22: Exynos 2200 vs. Snapdragon Gen 8.1 – benchmark comparison.

According to Qualcomm, around 75 percent of all premium Galaxy smartphones were recently shipped with Snapdragon processors. The proportion should now increase significantly over the coming years from the Galaxy S23.

When presenting the current business figures, Qualcomm already explains the following in the introduction according to the transcript (here in PDF):

“We’re very pleased to report that Qualcomm and Samsung have entered a new multiyear agreement starting in 2023, expanding the use of Snapdragon platforms for future premiums Samsung Galaxy products globally.”

Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Renno Amon is later quoted as saying:

“The way you should think about it is Snapdragon will power their Galaxy product line, their Galaxy flagship products. And what I can say at this point is we were 75% on Galaxy S22 before the agreement. You should be thinking about we’re going to be much better than that on Galaxy S23 and beyond. It’s a multiyear agreement. And it’s — that’s probably what I can tell you. You should think about us powering their devices globally.”