Qualcomm’s Toasty Snapdragon 810 Reportedly Falling Short Of Shipment Projections
Things aren't looking all that great for Qualcomm and its Snapdragon 810 (MSM8994) System-on-Chip. Following several reports of overheating, it's now being said that the chip maker's flagship part will fall short of sales targets. Apparently shipments of the Snapdragon 810 to key customers around the globe are falling short of what Qualcomm previously forecast.
Qualcomm denies there's an overheating problem with its part, though reports from owners of several different handsets that use the chip suggest otherwise. Even Sony has acknowledged the issue with its Xperia Z3+ and Xperia Z4 handsets and has promised a software fix. Unfortunately for owners of those devices, the software fix will likely just throttle the CPU and GPU, which should help prevent overheating, but will come at the expense of performance.
News of the sales shortage comes from a Chinese language website. The site also reports that there are production quality issues with the chipset. If that turns out to be true, it would be more of a black eye for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and its 20nm manufacturing process than it would be for Qualcomm, which could always go with a different fab.
Whether or not there are any production issues, the big reason why Qualcomm isn't shipping as many Snapdragon 810 parts as it hoped is because Samsung opted to go with its own Exynos 7420 SoC for its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge devices. Qualcomm saw this coming, as it announced in late January that it had lost a "large" customer.
Qualcomm denies there's an overheating problem with its part, though reports from owners of several different handsets that use the chip suggest otherwise. Even Sony has acknowledged the issue with its Xperia Z3+ and Xperia Z4 handsets and has promised a software fix. Unfortunately for owners of those devices, the software fix will likely just throttle the CPU and GPU, which should help prevent overheating, but will come at the expense of performance.
News of the sales shortage comes from a Chinese language website. The site also reports that there are production quality issues with the chipset. If that turns out to be true, it would be more of a black eye for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and its 20nm manufacturing process than it would be for Qualcomm, which could always go with a different fab.
Whether or not there are any production issues, the big reason why Qualcomm isn't shipping as many Snapdragon 810 parts as it hoped is because Samsung opted to go with its own Exynos 7420 SoC for its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge devices. Qualcomm saw this coming, as it announced in late January that it had lost a "large" customer.
