Qualcomm hinted that the pricing of the fourth generation Snapdragon 8 next year could be higher, making it its most expensive mobile SoC

Previously, it was reported that the pricing of Qualcomm's third-generation Snapdragon 8 is higher than before, and customers need to spend more money to purchase the flagship SoC of mobile platforms. Moreover, this trend of price increases does not seem to end here, and prices may even reach new highs. Next year, Qualcomm will bring the fourth generation Snapdragon 8, rumored to introduce a custom Oryon core that integrates NUVIA technology, and is likely to be manufactured using TSMC's 3nm process.

According to Android Authority, Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm's mobile business, stated that although customized cores for CPUs may not be expensive, Qualcomm needs to strike a balance between cost, power consumption, and performance, and this comes at a cost.

Recently, during the Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm announced the launch of its strongest computing processor ever built for PCs: the Snapdragon XElite. It adopts a custom Oryon kernel, mainly targeting laptops. Qualcomm plans to also adopt a custom Oryon kernel on the fourth generation Snapdragon 8, bringing the latest technology to smartphones, further expanding its usage range, and also sharing some development costs. It is said that Qualcomm spends a lot on developing customized Oryon kernels, so how to improve investment return and quickly recover research and development costs has become an important indicator.

The increase in research and development costs is also beneficial, such as the newly launched third-generation Snapdragon 8, which even defeated Apple's A17Pro in the multi-core benchmark testing of Geekbench6 and became the fastest mobile SoC. Obviously, next year's fourth generation Snapdragon 8 should be stronger, coupled with higher development costs and TSMC's latest technology, there seems to be no choice but to increase pricing. This also means that various smartphone manufacturers have to increase the prices of their terminals to avoid a significant impact on profit margins.