Qualcomm, Apple’s most prominent competitor and the main supplier of Android phone processors, is moving to raise the prices of its upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip to exceed $240, as a result of TSMC’s high manufacturing costs.
This jump puts companies such as “Samsung” and “Xiaomi” in front of a dilemma: either raise the final prices of their flagship phones or bear the cost at the expense of their profits, which makes them lose the competitive price advantage over Apple.
On the other hand, Apple benefits from designing its own processors and its stable direct contracts with “TSMC”, which allows it to control the costs of the “iPhone 17” series and maintain its current prices, becoming for the first time close in price to its competitors in the upper Android category, or even less expensive than them.
