And, now, as Qualcomm's high-tier and midtier smartphone chips transition to more advanced technologies, the chipmaker seems to be using Samsung's technologies there, too. Reuters points out that Samsung "lags well behind Taiwan's TSMC (NYSE:TSM) in contract manufacturing" and cites data from IHS showing that TSMC's foundry market share was 50.6% in 2016 while Samsung's was just 7.9%. Qualcomm used Samsung's 14-nanometer technology for the Snapdragon 820 series, and it's using Samsung's 10-nanometer technology to build its Snapdragon 835 series. Samsung (NASDAQOTH:SSNLF), one of the few major logic chip manufacturers left that is still pursuing leading-edge chip manufacturing technology development, reportedly told Reuters that it "plans to triple the market share of its contract chip manufacturing business within the next five years by aggressively adding clients." However, I think considering how things have played out over the last several years, I don't think any predictions around foundry market share should be based on the premise of TSMC dropping the ball or Samsung performing miracles.
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Even with that wider lineup of smartphones, Samsung has fallen from their one-time leadership position. Since the battery disaster with the Note 7 and Samsung's insulting handling of the disaster in China, Samsung lost another 7% market share year over year. Samsung has fallen off the top vendors list and only holds 3% of the market while Apple is barely hanging on to fifth spot with 8.2%. With OPPO and Vivo owned by the same billionaire co-founder Duan Yongping, they really rule the smartphone market. Apple sticks with premium smartphones and top profit margins which allows them to build high-end Apple Stores to better service the Chinese market.
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