Qualcomm (QCOM.US) future Snapdragon flagship chips may face diversion of orders from TSM.US using Samsung's 2nm process

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Qualcomm (QCOM.US) has just released the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipsets based on the 2nm manufacturing process. It was previously rumored that Qualcomm would use Samsung Foundry (Samsung Foundry) to produce some of its high-end chips, but the new chipset was not manufactured by Samsung. Now, according to reports, the chipmaker has revealed that it is collaborating with Samsung on the future Snapdragon mobile platform — which means that some upcoming flagship chipsets from Qualcomm may be manufactured using Samsung's advanced 2nm process technology.

Qualcomm is evaluating Samsung's 2nm process

According to reports, at a Snapdragon Summit 2026 briefing, Chris Patrick (Chris Patrick), senior vice president of Qualcomm and head of the mobile phone business, explained the company's relationship with Samsung Electronics. The executive reportedly confirmed: “Qualcomm is in full technical cooperation with Samsung Electronics.”

Patrick said Qualcomm is conducting an in-depth analysis of Samsung's 2nm process technology to determine how the technology can be applied to future products. “Samsung Foundry has been a core partner of Qualcomm for a long time and will continue to be an important partner in the future.” he added.

At the same time, it is reported that Qualcomm is also cooperating with Samsung Electronics Storage Business Unit (Memory Business Unit) to prepare for commercialization of the next generation of mobile DRAM—LPDDR6.

Qualcomm has yet to confirm which specific chipsets will be manufactured using the Samsung process, nor has it stated when such products may enter mass production. Qualcomm is currently cooperating with TSM.US (TSM.US), but recent reports suggest that Samsung Foundry may still be an important manufacturing partner for this chip maker.

Qualcomm and Samsung are already collaborating in the field of wearables and smart glasses. Samsung's latest smartwatch uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear Elite platform.

Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 at the Snapdragon Summit last week. Both chips are built on a 2nm process, equipped with an Adreno GPU and Hexagon NPU, and use Qualcomm's self-developed Oryon CPU architecture, with a peak clock speed of 5 GHz. Xiaomi released the Xiaomi 18 Pro equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6; the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max runs the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset.