Future Samsung flagship phones may be badly affected after Samsung announced that it will be closing its custom CPU division.
The division was responsible for developing the Mongoose cores used in the SoCs found in flagship devices such as Galaxy S10 or the Note 10 Plus.
This means that a group of around 300 will be let go by end of December.
“Based upon a thorough assessment of our System LSI business and the need to stay competitive in the global market, Samsung has decided to transition part of our U.S.-based R&D teams in Austin and San Jose,” the statement said.
From the statement, you can clearly see that Exynos was too expensive to produce but not as competitive as Snapdragon.
This means that the Exynos 990, which is likely to feature in the Galaxy S11 and was announced a couple of weeks ago, may be the last ever flagship SoC to be entirely developed inhouse.
The plot may yet thicken further, as earlier this year, AMD and Samsung struck a “multi-year strategic partnership”, making it more than likely that any new Exynos products going forward would feature technology stemming from that agreement.
For now, expect Samsung to rely on off the shelf processor cores, or more likely, semi-custom ones, similar to Qualcomm or Huawei.