Qualcomm confirms a ‘large customer’ has dropped the Snapdragon 810 from its roadmap

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 29 Jan 2015

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Reports about Samsung dropping Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor for its own Exynos chips have been floating around the Internet for quite sometime now. However, with Samsung and Qualcomm both remaining mum on this matter, the authenticity of the report could not be confirmed. 

Today at its fourth quarter earnings call though, Qualcomm confirmed that a “large customer” has dropped the Snapdragon 810 processor from its upcoming flagship device. While Qualcomm did not specify which OEM has dropped its Snapdragon 810 processor, it is all but clear that the company is hinting towards Samsung here.

Qualcomm also noted that a shift in the premium tier market will be reducing the near-term sales of its integrated Snapdragon chipsets and has instead skewed its product mix towards modem chipsets. The company is pointing towards Apple here, which sold 74.5 million iPhones in the last quarter of 2014. The Cupertino company uses its own application processors (AP) but relies on Qualcomm for baseband solutions.

Additionally, the company expects an increase in competition in China in 2015. All these combined factors have led the company to lower its expected revenue for 2015 from anywhere between $26.8-$28.8 billion to $26-$28 billion.

The chip giant did not explain as to why a “large customer” dropped its Snapdragon 810 chip from its roadmap. The Bloomberg report from earlier this month suggested that Samsung was forced to drop the Snapdragon 810 because of overheating issues, though an LG executive quickly denied any overheating issues with the chip.

Earlier today, Samsung released its quarterly earnings and the press release from the company made it evident that it will be relying heavily on its in-house Exynos chipsets on its devices in 2015.

Will you be buying the Galaxy S6 if it does not come with a Qualcomm chip?

[Via Re/Code]