This year is the first time companies like Qualcomm and MediaTek have switched to TSMC’s 3nm technology to launch their cutting-edge chipsets. In the case of the Dimensity 9400, producing it using advanced lithography does not come cheap, forcing phone makers like Vivo to keep a healthy profit margin by increasing the price of its newest X200 series by 7.5 percent. This rising trend is expected to be exacerbated by the arrival of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, with its unveiling said to happen later today.
Dimensity 9400 could undercut the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 with a lowered price, but it does not change the fact that smartphone chipsets are rising dangerously in price
Last year, Apple was the only company that introduced its 3nm chipsets that included the A17 Pro and M3 family. The reason why MediaTek and Qualcomm never got around to leveraging TSMC’s older 3nm ‘ N3B’ node is simple; the tape-out costs alone for Apple’s M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max were estimated to be $1 billion. Naturally, it was not financially feasible for MediaTek and Qualcomm to undertake such a cost, but they also had to remain competitive in the industry, so they bounced back, starting with the Dimensity 9400.
Unfortunately, the transition from the 4nm N4P node to 3nm N3E has forced MediaTek’s phone partners to raise the prices of its flagships by a 7.5 percent delta compared to market expectations, at least according to Economic Daily News. Apple has bucked this trend as it has maintained the starting price of its smaller ‘Pro’ model at $999 while only charging a $100 premium when it announced the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and that too by offering double the storage at 256GB.
The report does not talk about how expensive the Dimensity 9400 is to mass produce, but a previous rumor claimed that the chipset’s price is $155, making it 20 percent higher than the Dimensity 9300. These chipset costs are expected to rise further, as MediaTek has little choice but to stick to TSMC since Samsung cannot scale past the obstacle of increasing the yields of its 3nm GAA process. Additionally, as the transistor count of wafers increases while improving the lithography, the price will exponentially skyrocket.
News Source: Economic Daily News
