For South Korea’s Samsung, the deal will help it boost its non-memory operations, which plays into its strategy to diversify its portfolio of products.
For San Diego, California-based Qualcomm, a dominant supplier for CDMA chips and technology, the deal would help stem the supply constraint it has faced in recent years as its foundry partners struggled to meet demand.
Our foundry agreement with Samsung will provide an additional source of supply and assist us in our strategy aimed to ensure capacity to support existing and anticipated business growth in both CDMA and WCDMA markets, said Sanjay Jha, president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, in a statement.
Financial terms or timing of the deal were not disclosed.
During the third quarter, Samsung’s non-memory chip revenues totaled about $530m, or about 12% of its total chip sales. The company leads the worldwide market for memory chips.
