Samsung was trying to hit two targets with its Exynos 2600 gambit: strengthen its negotiating position with Qualcomm, and pad its mobile division's margins. Now, the South Korean behemoth appears on track to achieve both of these goals, if a recent report from Chosun Biz is anything to go by.
Samsung will equip the base Galaxy S26 and the S26+ with Exynos 2600 chips acquired from its LSI division at a $20-$30 discount to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
To wit, South Korea's Chosun Biz is now reporting that Samsung's Mobile Division (MX) has negotiated a very attractive per-unit price for the Exynos 2600 chips from its LSI division. Apparently, the LSI division will equip the base Galaxy S26 and the S26+ with its Exynos 2600 chips at a $20-$30 discount to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
This discount pertains to an initial volume of Exynos 2600 chips, with the per-unit price of Samsung's in-house silicon expected to be renegotiated once the mobile division consumes this initial volume. Even so, the Exynos 2600's discounted price is expected to significantly bolster the margins of Samsung's mobile division.
As we reported before, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra will be exclusively powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip. Do note that the model commands a 50 percent share of the Galaxy S-series sales. Moreover, Qualcomm's flagship chip will also power some of the other S26 variants in select regions, including the US. Nonetheless, the base S26 and the S26+ will use Exynos 2600, especially in the EU, South Korea, and a number of developing countries.
While both Samsung and Qualcomm leverage Arm's chip architecture designs, the latter designs its own custom CPU cores that are optimized for smartphones, while the former only partially modifies Arm's generic core designs. Consequently, Qualcomm's flagship offerings have generally outperformed those from Samsung over the past few years.
According to ETNews, the Exynos 2600, manufactured using Samsung's new 2nm GAA process, delivers satisfactory performance due to features such as Heat Pass Block (HPB), but still suffers from residual yield issues, which have limited the volume production for the new chip. This contradicts a recent ZDNET report, which noted that Exynos 2600 had achieved stable yields, with major gains in efficiency and thermal controls, to the tune of around 30 percent, and a significantly bolstered NPU for improved AI performance.
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