Qualcomm Is Facing Reduced Shipments Forecast Because Of Snapdragon 810’s Overheating Issues
Qualcomm has a problem, and a big one at that. The company’s flagship SoC doesn’t make people talk about how fast or efficient the chip is. The very mention of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 chipset makes one think of how much the chip overheats.
While Qualcomm had been repeatedly denying it, Sony has recently admitted that its recently released smartphone based on the Snapdragon 810 – named the Xperia Z3+ in international markets and the Xperia Z4 in Japan – is prone to overheating. The Japanese firm however, has promised a software update, which it claims, will rectify the issue.
With all the controversy surrounding the chipset, it’s no surprise, that a new report now says Qualcomm will miss sales targets for its MSM8994 chip (Snapdragon 810) due to lower shipments forecast to key customers around the globe, from Japan to Taiwan, from Beijing to Shenzhen.
In addition, the sources also stressed that the Snapdragon 810 suffers from production quality issues. If true, that would be very bad news indeed for TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company), because the MSM8994 is based on TSMC’s 20nm manufacturing process.
The one company however, which stands to gain from this whole mess is Samsung, which has already switched over from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipsets to its own in-house Exynos SoCs for its flagship devices like the Galaxy S6 and the S6 Edge and also the Galaxy Note 4 and Note Edge in some markets around the world.
The SoC used in those devices is the Exynos 7420, which incorporates fin-shaped field-effect transistors (FinFET) technology using the 14nm process, and is manufactured by Samsung Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics. The chips are already recognized as being the fastest chips available on mobile devices.
TSMC meanwhile, will only start mass production of its 16nm chips next month, but has promised to fast forward the transition to 10nm chips some time in 2016.
Source: MyDrivers.com
