Samsung shipped the entire Galaxy S25 lineup with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite. No detours, no Exynos variants, just pure Snapdragon across the board. That’s a big win for consumers, but it might have cost a hefty price tag for Samsung. So what’s the catch? A well-known industry analyst has dropped some telling numbers.
Samsung lost $400 million betting everything on Snapdragon in the Galaxy S25 series
According to Jukanlosreve, Samsung’s decision to skip Exynos 2500 altogether led to an estimated $400 millon loss for Samsung’s System LSI division, which is responsible for Exynos processor. Last year, the Exynos 2500 was expected to power at least some Galaxy S25 units, especially in markets such as Europe, India, and more. That would’ve followed the company’s dual-chip strategy. But it was ultimately dropped.
Reports suggest the chip wasn’t competitive enough in terms of performance or efficiency compared to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy. As a result, Samsung MX opted for a single-chip strategy globally to avoid performance differences across markets. Some reports even suggested that yield rates were as low as 20%. That roughly means only 1 out of 5 chips manufactured passed the quality test.
That indeed benefited users, performance across all Galaxy S25 models has been consistent, and early feedback on battery life and thermals has been positive. But for System LSI, which had already invested heavily in developing the Exynos 2500, the outcome was financially damaging. The $400 million figure likely includes sunk R&D costs, production pipeline delays, and lost business opportunities.
This isn’t the first time Exynos has struggled. Previous models like the Exynos 2200 were criticized for overheating and lagging behind Snapdragon counterparts in GPU and power efficiency.
The failure of the 2500 to make it to market adds pressure on System LSI. It now has to prove the viability of the next-gen Exynos 2600. Samsung does plan to bring back Exynos in the Galaxy S26, with the Exynos 2600 reportedly set to power some models in Europe. Samsung is betting big on Exynos 2600, which may be built using 2nm node.
