We all knew that Samsung’s decision to forgo the use of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 chip in favor of its own Exynos 7420 chip in the Galaxy S6 would hurt Qualcomm, but we didn’t know exactly how much until just recently. According to the company’s recent earnings report, Qualcomm has decided to lower its expectations for the rest of the year by quite a lot, and this is after having already lowered it a few months ago when it first came to light that Samsung wanted to use its own chip in the Galaxy S6.
Qualcomm announced Q2 financials for the year of 2015 this morning, and they weren’t very good. Looking at the big picture, it is not the end of times by any means at Qualcomm, but the company has lowered its expectations for the second half of this year, largely due in part to Samsung’s ditching of the Snapdragon 810, opting to use its own in-house Exynos processor in the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge. Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm, stated the following in the release. “While we remain confident in the significant growth opportunities ahead, we are reducing our QCT outlook for fiscal 2015, primarily due to the increased impact of customer share shifts within the premium tier and a decline in our share at a large customer.” The part in bold, while not directly attributed, is likely Samsung with the aforementioned decision to use Exynos processors in the new Galaxy S6. It may also be safe to assume that Samsung will continue to use the Exynos processor in the upcoming Galaxy Note 5, which may only lead to more hurt for Qualcomm.