Copyright Wccftech
Samsung is expected to switch back to a dual chip strategy for its Galaxy S26 lineup in 2026, using both Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and its own Exynos 2600. However, judging by the latest commentary from Qualcomm's management, Samsung's Exynos 2600 would only power a relatively small subset of the Galaxy S26 series, with Qualcomm's apex chipset expected to feature within the lion's share of these devices. Qualcomm Q4 2025 Earnings Eall: "Our assumption for any new Galaxy is always going to be 75%. That is our assumption for Galaxy S26." During Qualcomm's Q4 2025 Earnings Call that took place earlier today, the company was asked about its "lead Android customer [Samsung] potentially looking to use an internal modem" and the impact that this development might have on Qualcomm's overall share in Samsung's business. Qualcomm's management responded with the following insight: "We have said for a number of years, a number of reasons, and this has been true in the past, I think, several years, that what used to be a normal relationship at a 50% share, the new baseline is about 75% share." Critically, the chipmaker expects to maintain its new 75 percent baseline share with Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S26 series: "On Galaxy S25, we got 100%. Our assumption for any new Galaxy is always going to be 75%. That is our assumption for Galaxy S26." This is a remarkable statement from Qualcomm, and indicates its infallible confidence in the overall superiority of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs. Samsung's in-house Exynos 2600 chipset. Of course, the Exynos 2600 has been holding up surprisingly well against Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in pre-launch benchmark tests. In fact, Samsung's first 2nm GAA chipset even outperforms Apple's A19 Pro when it comes to 'performance per watt' metric, consuming just 7.6W when running the Geekbench 6 multi-core benchmark, and 3.6W when running the single-core test. Nonetheless, it seems Samsung is not confident in the real-world performance superiority of the Exynos 2600, hence Qualcomm's apparent cockiness in projecting a 75 percent share of the SoC within the Samsung Galaxy S26 lineup.
