A piece of news coming from Korea may shock Android flagship Smartphone lovers. The famous silicon chip maker Qualcomm increases the price of Snapdragon 875 over its predecessor up to 60% in total cost. Though OEMs have an option to by Snapdragon 875 without the modem. But still, it’s relatively higher than the previous Snapdragon 865. The impact of this price hike will make Android flagship devices more expensive. The source says that Xiaomi has paid $250 for Snapdragon 875 chipset, for its next flagship device.
Snapdragon 875 Why price hiked?
Due to the global recession, Qualcomm already come up with a solution to profit margin by increasing the price. But it may backfire because in the silicon market there are already Samsung’s Exynos and MediaTek’s Helio present. Which backs Android devices with their SoCs for long. Undoubtedly it will open doors for Samsung as Exynos is doing pretty well and less at price. Also, MediaTek will be benefited. Now it will justify the price of Apple devices. The price will be close to each other for Apple and Android flagship devices.
Google and LG already planned to ditch Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 series chipsets, several reports says LG G9 and Google Pixel 5 will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 700 series chipsets. Google and LG may take the decision because of price concern, the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 875 will relatively makes the device expensive for the consumers. However, in the future, such big players like Google, OnePlus, LG may source silicon from Samsung or MediaTek.
If we go to the flashback, the Android flagship devices are seeing ridiculously price jumps on OnePlus, and Xiaomi is all seen significant price jumps compared to their predecessors. All this happens due to the policy change of Qualcomm company. Earlier OEM has an option to buy the chipset only i.e excluding modem. Now they make it mandatory to purchase the entire chip. For Example, Snapdragon 865 was not integrated with the X55 modem but the new policy forces the company to purchase the SoC and the modem together. That’s why we have seen a price jumps on these flagship smartphones in 2020. In the future, Android flagship phones will be even more expensive.
Also Read: Samsung Announces Exynos 880 To Compete Against Snapdragon 765G