Following the recent announcement that Samsung’s Galaxy S25 series will exclusively feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips, new reports suggest the partnership will extend to other Samsung products, which include home appliances. Through this collaboration, Samsung aims to reinforce its negotiating stance, which would ultimately increase its ability to shape industry trends, secure its negotiation power chip pricing, and also enable the development of more advanced appliances by integrating Qualcomm’s technology into a product lineup.
Citing a report from SEDaily, industry sources reveal that Samsung aims to replace the low-performance chips sourced from China and Taiwan with more powerful Qualcomm processors. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, consumers expect seamless and automated living experiences and intelligent features in home appliances are driving this upgrade.
The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has raised the bar for processing power, necessitating chips with advanced neural processing units (NPUs) for local AI processing and faster connectivity options. Advanced home appliances require multiple sensors, including cameras, and the ability to process voice and images.
Qualcomm’s chips will provide the horsepower for Samsung’s smart home devices. The plans of Samsung Electronics to integrate advanced Qualcomm chips into its high-end home appliances will start with the AI family hub series refrigerators. The company has already incorporated Qualcomm’s technology into its flagship robotic vacuum cleaner, the JetBot combo AI.
According to Yoo MI-Young, vice president of Samsung Electronics home appliances division, the company is working towards launching home appliances equipped with on-device large-scale language models (LLMs) by 2025. Samsung aims to develop products with low-power, high-performance neural processing unit (NPU) chips to achieve this goal, Yoo Mi Young explained.
The usage of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 elite chip in Samsung’s Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25+, and Galaxy S25 ultra smartphones allows Samsung to negotiate better prices for the Snapdragon 8 elite. The chip’s cost is reportedly higher than Samsung’s in-house Exynos 2500. Production challenges with the Exyos 2500, particularly the struggle with production yields, likely contributed to Samsung’s decision that the company’s manufacturing facility faced quality control challenges.
Snapdragon, designed by Qualcomm Technologies Inc., is a range of powerful computer chips for mobile devices. These advanced system-on-chip (SoC) semiconductors utilize ARM architecture in their central operating units (CPUs). Snapdragon chips power various devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, vehicles, Android devices, and Windows devices.
Beyond processors, the Snapdragon line includes modems for internet connectivity, WiFi chips, and mobile charging solutions. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon journey began with the QSD8250’s release in December 2007, featuring the first 1 GHz mobile processor. In 2011, the second-generation Snapdragon introduced the “krait” microarchitecture, enabling dynamic speed adjustment.
At CES 2013, Qualcomm introduced their Snapdragon 800 series, rebranding earlier models as the 200, 300, and 600 series. The company rebranded its modem products under Snapdragon in 2015. By 2018, snapdragon-based CPU-powered “always connected PCs” running Windows 10, marking Qualcomm’s entry into the PC market with ARM architecture. Notable iterations include the Snapdragon 805, 810, 615, and 410, which show the evolution and expansion of the platform.
