Qualcomm announced four new smartphone chipsets today, keeping the midrange of its line fresh a year after losing its No. 1 global market-share position to MediaTek.
The Snapdragon 480 Plus, 680, 695, and 778G Plus address the affordable global smartphone market, where Qualcomm has been losing ground over the past year.
The upgrades here also clear the deck for Qualcomm’s real announcement, coming in about a month at its Snapdragon Summit. That’s where Qualcomm will announce its next flagship Snapdragon chipset and whatever technologies will bubble down into its 2022 chips.
According to Counterpoint Research, MediaTek is cleaning Qualcomm’s market-share clock at the moment, with a 43% global market share to Qualcomm’s 32%. This has less of an effect on profits because more of MediaTek’s sales are at the low end, while Qualcomm’s sales are generally at the higher end.
Counterpoint says MediaTek’s Dimensity 700 series has been very successful in midrange 5G. Here in the US, MediaTek captured the best-selling Samsung Galaxy A32. A list of Dimensity 700 and Dimensity 720 phones shows a ton of models from Xiaomi, Poco, Realme, and Oppo, all of which Qualcomm considers key partners. (It’s probably not a coincidence that Xiaomi and Oppo both give quotes in Qualcomm’s press release.)
While the US remains mostly a flagship-phone country (because of monthly phone payment plans), the $200-$500 phone range in the rest of the world is booming, and there, the Snapdragon 480 has Qualcomm’s strongest player. As I said when it launched, it pretty much doubled the performance Qualcomm offered for $200-$300 phones, adding 5G. Here in the US, it has most prominently appeared in the OnePlus Nord N200 5G.
The new Snapdragon 480 Plus appears to mostly be a clock-speed bump. It’s on the same 8nm process as the 480, with the same modem and the same cores, but the faster cores operate at 2.2GHz rather than 2GHz now. There’s also a Bluetooth bump from version 5.1 to 5.2.
The Snapdragon 690 appeared in the OnePlus Nord N10 and TCL 20 5G. The new 695 has several improvements. Moving from an 8nm process to a 6nm process will improve power efficiency, and Qualcomm claims a 15% faster CPU and 30% better GPU than on the 690. So the 695 could go into the OnePlus Nord N20, at least in theory.
The Snapdragon 778G+ appears to be primarily a processor bump on the existing 778G, moving the fastest core from 2.4GHz to 2.5GHz.
The Snapdragon 680 is a 4G-only chipset with somewhat confusing numbering. It’s a higher number than the 675, but it’s really an upgrade of components in the 662, with a dramatically smaller process (going from 11nm to 6nm), a CPU speed bump (2GHz to 2.4GHz), and three-camera support instead of two. With no 5G, though, it’s clearly destined for still 4G-heavy markets like India and Africa.
Phones based on the new chipsets will appear in “the coming months,” according to Qualcomm’s press release.
