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It is no secret that over the years, the cost of tech components have gone up. This comes as companies spend more money researching and developing new cutting-edge mobile technology. The new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite is Qualcomm’s latest chipset, but it is also reportedly their most expensive to date. With these rising costs, could Qualcomm’s pricing decisions give their competitors like MediaTek a chance at grabbing a larger slice of the pie?
Rising costs
How much Qualcomm’s chipsets cost is something most of us may never know for sure. There are many factors to consider, like the relationship between Qualcomm and their partners. It is possible that some larger ones, such as Samsung, might be able to negotiate a better price.
What we have heard, however, is that the new Snapdragon 8 Elite is said to cost $190 per chip. This is a 20% increase over the previous model. We have also heard from other publications that its successor, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 (or whatever it will be known as) could see another price increase.
Like we said earlier, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Qualcomm definitely spends a lot of money developing its own chipsets. Plus, there are other associated costs like licensing of technologies, marketing, and also using smaller and more advanced manufacturing processes. All of this adds to the overall cost.
MediaTek’s potential opportunity
That being said, the increasing costs of Qualcomm chipsets could provide an excellent opportunity for MediaTek, who right now is probably Qualcomm’s most direct competitor.
MediaTek used to be known for providing more affordable, but less powerful, chipsets. This was perfect for companies who wanted to create more budget-friendly devices. Over the past few years, MediaTek has been slowly changing that narrative with its Dimensity 9000 series.
In fact, MediaTek’s latest flagship chipset, the Dimensity 9400, is proving to be a worthy opponent. Based on the benchmarks we’ve seen, the gap is definitely closing. While the Snapdragon 8 Elite seems to fare better in terms of single-core and multi-core performance, MediaTek is holding their own in other tests.
For instance, the Vivo X200 Pro which is powered by the Dimensity 9400, scored 2,923,567 points in the AnTuTu 10 benchmarks. This is versus the Realme GT7 Pro, which uses the Snapdragon 8 Elite, and managed to score 2,746,604 points. The benchmarks also revealed that the Dimensity 9400 took the lead over the Snapdragon 8 Elite in 3DMark tests, edging out Qualcomm slightly.
While the difference in performance isn’t exactly night and day, it does prove that MediaTek has what it takes to stand up to Qualcomm as a worthwhile alternative for handset makers.
Future of the chipset landscape
The rising costs of Qualcomm’s chipsets provides a great opportunity for MediaTek, and in turn it could affect the smartphone chipset landscape.
In fact, there were rumors that due to the costs of the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Samsung was actually considering using MediaTek’s chipsets. Subsequent rumors suggested that the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE could also end up powered by a MediaTek chip. This goes to show that even tech giants like Samsung, who haven’t exactly favored MediaTek in the past, are now taking them into consideration.
That being said, performance isn’t everything. There are still plenty of features in Qualcomm’s chipsets that could make them more favored in other aspects other than raw power. On-board AI processing capabilities, the sound card, the GPU, the ability to handle image processing for smartphone cameras, and so on could be better compared to MediaTek.
Plus, based on the benchmarks, maybe MediaTek’s slight edge over Qualcomm in some areas might not be enough to convince manufacturers to completely jump the Qualcomm ship. Will we see a smartphone landscape in the future that is completely dominated by MediaTek?
We wouldn’t discount it entirely, but this is assuming Qualcomm is just going to sit back and let that happen.
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