This is why Samsung launched the Galaxy S22 with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in India

Supply: Nick Sutrich / Android Central

It’s official: the Galaxy S22 sequence is likely to be powered by Qualcomm’s latest 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in India. Only a few leaks hinted as quite a bit sooner than the launch, and Samsung confirmed the equivalent in a weblog put up.

That is clearly an infinite deal, on account of Samsung solely launched Exynos variants of its telephones throughout the nation over the past seven years. The one event the place it deviated from the path was with the 5G variant of the Galaxy S20 FE, which equipped the Snapdragon 865. Samsung initially launched the S20 FE sans 5G connectivity, with that model working the Exynos 990. However in March 2021, the Korean producer rolled out the 5G model with Qualcomm’s chipset, and that generated an extra wave of curiosity throughout the machine.

Samsung is the one Android producer to utilize a dual-sourcing approach for its flagships, and it continues to take motion on account of the model has labored notably properly for the mannequin. It reserves the Qualcomm mannequin for North America and Korea, nevertheless completely different world markets get the Exynos-powered model. Nevertheless, that’s altering with the Galaxy S22 sequence, with Samsung introducing the Qualcomm-powered variant in extra markets.

Samsung will not be ditching the dual-sourcing model; it’s merely being additional strategic with its Qualcomm positioning.

Along with India, Samsung is introducing the Qualcomm-based Galaxy S22 throughout the UAE (we’ll must attend for availability to kick off in numerous markets to gauge what areas are getting the Qualcomm mannequin). That said, Samsung will proceed to produce the Exynos 2200-powered Galaxy S22 in most world areas — along with the UK, Germany, France, and the rest of Europe.

It’s understandable why Samsung is making the change in select nations; these are markets with a predominantly tech-savvy userbase, and so they don’t primarily generate plenty of product sales amount for Samsung throughout the high-end class. Whereas India accounts for over 80 million phone product sales a 12 months, the premium part (over $600) accounts for a tiny portion.

In 2021, it made up merely 4% of the overall market, and that’s after an infinite improvement 12 months for premium telephones that seen this class double in market share. So we’re an addressable market of beneath 3 million, with Apple dominating gross sales by some margin. It’s an identical situation throughout the UAE, and whereas premium telephones have a greater share, the addressable market for Samsung throughout the high-end part is beneath 2.5 million.

As such, Samsung doesn’t stand to lose quite a bit by bringing the Qualcomm-based variations of its latest flagships to India and the UAE. If one thing, it might see uptick in product sales figures from last 12 months’s S21 sequence, notably considering these markets on a regular basis had a robust userbase for the Galaxy Notice sequence. The Galaxy S22 Extremely is definitely the successor to the Notice 20 Extremely, and the reality that it’s working the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 makes it one among many finest Android telephones of the 12 months and the obvious enhance path for Notice 20 homeowners throughout the space.

What’s fascinating to me is that Samsung didn’t launch the Snapdragon 888-powered mannequin of the Galaxy S21 FE in these nations. Throughout a product briefing ahead of its launch, Samsung execs pointed to constructive ideas for the Exynos 2100-based S21 sequence as the first trigger for persevering with with the Exynos chip, and as far as product sales figures go, the S21 FE has a significantly better potential than the S22 sequence.

Having used all of Samsung’s Exynos-powered flagships starting with the Galaxy S6 sequence, the defining trait with the Exynos sequence over the past seven years has been the dearth of sustained effectivity. Samsung’s formidable plans to create a custom-made CPU which may sort out Qualcomm and Apple failed, and the Exynos 990 throughout the Galaxy S20 was a low degree for the sequence — it had a bent to heat up, so it wanted to be persistently throttled. That’s why Samsung started using off-the-shelf Arm cores starting with the Exynos 2100.

I uncover it ironic that Samsung is switching up its approach in a 12 months the place it lastly addressed plenty of the underlying factors with its Exynos designs. The Exynos 2200 is the first design to consequence from Samsung’s partnership with AMD, and it brings plenty of thrilling choices to the desk, along with ray tracing and variable value shading. Qualcomm had the distinct edge on this area over the past decade, nevertheless the Exynos 2200 seems like a robust challenger in plenty of areas.

I was keen on getting my arms on the Exynos 2200-based Galaxy S22 Extremely, nevertheless I suppose I’ll should settle for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 mannequin in its place. All kidding aside though, it’s a smart switch from Samsung to position the Qualcomm-based mannequin of its flagships in these nations. It isn’t going to end in a noticeable uptick in world product sales for the Galaxy S sequence, nevertheless Samsung stands to appreciate plenty of goodwill, and it would on a regular basis use additional of that.