Samsung hasn’t done a lot this year to deserve fortifying its position in the global smartphone market, yet that’s exactly what the company managed to accomplish seeing how the United States ended up unleashing all of its bureaucratic fury onto Huawei, its closest rival by both device shipments and sales.
Coupled with its traditionally strong drive for innovation that only started weakening in recent years but is now on par to correct its course, it’s no wonder Samsung sees this as a perfect time for experimentation. It’s literally on the top of the world right now, being an undisputed leader of one of the most valuable consumer electronics markets on the planet. So, what comes next after seeing a massive market share? Well, that’s easy: making sure your investors are convinced your past entrepreneurial endeavors worth it. In other words, working on improving your profit margins.
That’s precisely what Samsung is now understood to be doing, with the firm reportedly signing a licensing deal with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. that will soon see a number of its smartphones and tablets powered by AMD-made graphics chips. The move is an industry first, both for Samsung and AMD itself. The partnership allows the former to diversify its portfolio and essentially force its suppliers to be more competitive, whereas the latter gets to access an entirely new market; one that’s been eyeing for quite some time now.
The American hardware manufacturer is understood to be set to earn hundreds of millions of dollars with the collaboration, though it’s still unlikely it will be supplying modules intended to be used in its home country. Instead, as is the case with most of Samsung’s highly experimental endeavors, the firm appears to be positioned to first test its new supplier in a smaller number of markets, presumably with somewhat niche devices using its in-house Exynos-series chips.
Regardless, that silicon lineup has been tied to ARM and its Mali GPUs for many a year now, so Samsung is still applying obvious pressure on its suppliers; if worst comes to pass and all of its devices using AMD GPUs fail, the company should still be left with one established supplier familiar with its platform that’s more willing to play ball when it comes to negotiating prices. That’s certainly not a bad position to be in, especially when you’re already the biggest fish in both your own pond and every other one combined. After all, it’s not like ARM can do much; the British firm is currently not even allowed to license its designs to Samsung’s largest rival, let alone actually provide it with any hardware.
All things considered, it’s no wonder Samsung is getting bolder as seemingly everything’s going its way right now. Even though the South Korean conglomerate lost quite a bit of momentum over the course of 2018, it’s rebounding in quite a fashion while watching Huawei place its ambitions to overtake it on pause as its very ability to do business is now being called into question, with suppliers dropping it left and right due to the standing U.S. ban signed by President Trump.