이 기사는 2022년 04월 15일 08:04 thebell 에 표출된 기사입니다.

Samsung Electronics’ latest mobile application processor, Exynos 2200, was the first outcome of hard work after the company’s vice chairman Lee Jae-yong returned to managing the tech giant last summer. But many are unsure of its quality, especially after the chipset was not used in Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S22 series sold in major markets.

Shortly after his parole in August last year, Lee unveiled plans to invest 240 trillion won ($196 billion) over the next three years, of which more than 50 trillion won was expected to be allocated to growing the company’s non-memory semiconductor business.

Lee’s focus has been on developing the technology for Exynos, Samsung’s own mobile chipset that was first released in 2011 by its chip design unit, System LSI. The global market for smartphone application processors, which function as the brain of mobile devices, is getting bigger every year, growing 23% to $30.8 billion in 2021, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.

The latest Exynos 2200, which was rolled out earlier this year, was especially important for Samsung’s System LSI as it has continued to lose its market share to rivals like Qualcomm, Apple and MediaTek in recent years.

The development of Exynos 2200 was led by chip design experts Park Sung-boem and Michael Goddard. The chipset adopted US chip designer AMD-based processing technology for faster graphic performance, raising expectations that it would be used in most of Samsung’s new Galaxy S22 series.

However, it turned out that the flagship Galaxy S22 lineup was not equipped with Exynos 2200. At its Galaxy Unpack event on February 10, Samsung’s mobile unit only said the chipset powering its new smartphone was built on a 4-nanometer process but did not mention the Exynos at all. On the same day, Qualcomm announced on its official Twitter account that its Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processer was used in Samsung’s Galaxy S22 and Galaxy Tab S8 series.

Under one roof but operating independently

Samsung’s mobile unit has used both Snapdragon and Exynos to power its Galaxy devices. The fact that it chose Snapdragon over Exynos for its Galaxy S22 series sold in major markets has hurt market trust in Samsung’s chipset.

Samsung’s mobile unit and chip design unit are under one roof but operate independently. “They operate like completely separate entities,” an industry insider said.

Many industry experts said Samsung’s mobile unit decided to use Exynos 2200 for only part of its markets, probably because of low yields. Mobile processors represent the second highest share of smartphone production costs.

AMD, which collaborated with Samsung to develop Exynos 2200, has less experience in the mobile space than other major chip designers, and this could be one of the risk factors, some observers said.

Performance of Exynos 2200 looks good. The Exynos 2200-powered Galaxy S22 Ultra got 1,157 and 3,307 points in the single-core and multi-core tests of Geekbench, respectively. In comparison, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-powered Galaxy S22 smartphone received some 1,200 points and just over 3,200 points for the single-core and multi-core tests.

There are also views that Samsung needs to pursue vertical integration to reduce costs and ensure a stable supply chain. Samsung’s top executives who took their new roles after the tech giant’s leadership shakeup late last year need to play a more active role in achieving vertical integration, some industry experts said. (Reporting by Hyun-ji Sohn)