Samsung is targeting greater use of its own Exynos processors in the forthcoming Galaxy S27, according to DigiTimes.
Application processors are the main chips that run a smartphone, and Samsung has swung repeatedly between using its own designs and buying from merchant suppliers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek.
The logic for a shift back is straightforward.
With production costs rising across the industry, a homegrown design manufactured in Samsung's own foundry should cost less than buying a chip from a rival.
The complication is that other reporting suggests Samsung has struggled with the cost profile of the new Exynos 2700, which undercuts the central argument for using it.
That tension explains why the company's chip ambitions have grown and receded so often over the years.
The consequences of a genuine shift fall most heavily on Qualcomm.
Its application processor business depends substantially on Samsung, and high-end handset shipments from Samsung and Apple have held up better this year than cheaper models.
Losing volume at the premium end would therefore hurt more than the raw unit numbers suggest.
TSMC, by contrast, has little at stake.
Historically Samsung's choices mattered to the Taiwanese foundry, since Qualcomm's recent modems rely on it while Samsung uses its own plants.
But with advanced logic capacity constrained, any wafers freed up would be quickly filled by other customers.
That leaves TSMC largely indifferent to which path Samsung takes with this generation of processors.
The strategic question is whether Samsung can make Exynos cheap enough to justify the switch, rather than whether it can make it at all.
