Yesterday, a bombshell report alleged that Samsung found itself “shocked” by Google’s switch to TSMC foundries for the upcoming Pixel 10 series rumored to arrive later this summer. According to reporting from The Bell, the Tensor G5 swap is being called “the Google incident” internally, with this drama apparently serving as some sort of wake-up call to the company as a whole.
Put simply, this is all ludicrous.
These foundry issues only highlight a larger issue within the company’s culture. Samsung’s shock and awe at Google’s decision to move away from a manufacturer that has played a role in plenty of the Pixel’s headaches in the Tensor era doesn’t reassure me that the brand is working to fix its own internal struggles. Instead, it feels like once again, Samsung is the last to realize it has a problem on its hands.
Since the original Tensor ship found in the Pixel 6 series, Google has faced some pretty significant criticism towards its house-made processors. Plenty of these headaches spawn directly from Google’s choice in modem — also Samsung, but let’s put that aside for now, as Google is still relying on the company’s modems for the upcoming Pixel 10. Rather, in direct comparison to the Qualcomm chipsets powering most of the Pixel’s rivals, Tensor simply couldn’t keep up in terms of raw performance or efficiency.
Now, a move to TSMC doesn’t necessarily equate to fixes for either of these elements. However, there is a reason practically every other semiconductor company relies on TSMC to build their respective chipsets for them, and it’s because of their proven track record. Apple’s acclaimed A-series and M-series chips are all handled by TSMC; Samsung hasn’t touched Apple silicon since the A9 in 2015, and hasn’t single-handedly built one since the A7. Likewise, Qualcomm’s last Samsung-made chip was 2021’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1; for nearly four years now, it’s been TSMC all the way.
In fact, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is exactly the reason Qualcomm moved away from Samsung to TSMC. That chip, found in devices like the Galaxy S22 series, famously ran hot. Just through a mid-cycle shift to TSMC’s 4nm node, Qualcomm was able to eke out fairly substantial gains in CPU and GPU performance, all while using less power to do so. There’s a reason every flagship Snapdragon SoC since has been produced by TSMC: The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 succeeded where its predecessor failed.
Apple and Qualcomm’s respective departures should’ve been enough on their own to raise red flags within the company, but let’s not forget Samsung itself routinely opts against using Exynos chips from its own foundries, to the occasional embarrassment of the actual Exynos team. For as rough as the Snapdragon-powered Galaxy S22 was, the European model — which ran on Exynos — performed far worse. For the Galaxy S23 series and beyond, Samsung has partnered closely with Qualcomm to deliver “for Galaxy” branded variants of Snapdragon processors, all of which, to reiterate, are all built by TSMC.
We’ve seen the brand flirt with a real dedication to Exynos in the past. From the potential of fully unique chips that always seem several years away from market to current rumors surrounding whether the Galaxy Z Flip 7 will use Exynos globally, including in the US, there’s always plenty of noise surrounding Samsung’s fabrication. And yet, nothing substantial seems to amount to it. If Samsung itself doesn’t necessarily believe in its own foundries — foundries, mind you, that are only hitting a 50 percent yield — why should anyone else?
All of this on its own is fairly damning of Samsung’s internal culture, but zooming out beyond a simple focus on its foundries paints a much worse picture. It’s been incredibly frustrating to watch Samsung’s dominance over Android throughout the last decade, because we’ve seen some truly absurd highs, only to watch as the brand did the absolute bare minimum to compete once it found itself sitting on top of the mobile world.
We’re talking about a company that launched the Galaxy S25 Edge to fairly tepid reviews, seemingly with the only goal of getting ahead of a still-rumored iPhone later this fall. We’re talking about a company that brought employees in to work on weekends last year in an attempt to rebuild its reputation, only to release phones as uninspired as, you know, the Galaxy S25 Edge.
We’re talking about a company that is only just beginning to catch up to the competition in a product category it invented — foldables — while getting out-designed by Google, OnePlus, Motorola, and practically every Chinese OEM. How Samsung wasn’t first to the tri-fold race is, frankly, beyond belief.
So forgive me if I’m not particularly surprised when Samsung, a different division as it may be, is facing headwinds. To be fair, this brand is still capable of releasing some excellent hardware, and later-gen Tensor chipsets have absolutely outperformed their predecessors. I did enjoy elements of my time with the Galaxy S25 Ultra earlier this year, and these latest Fold leaks have me genuinely looking forward to next month’s Unpacked.
But if Google’s decision to leave for a new foundry has left Samsung as shocked as yesterday’s report implied, it might finally be time for leadership to take a step back — and to take a good, long look in the mirror.
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