For $240, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is Snapdragon 8 3rd generation. One possible reason for the price increase is the increased price of silicon wafers that TSMC uses to manufacture chips using the second generation 3nm process node (N3E). This will be the first Snapdragon 3 flagship chip to be produced at the 8nm node, and the higher price makes sense as the wafer price has doubled from $15,000 to $30,000.
Cowan’s BOM for the iPhone 16 Pro Max lists the A18 Pro AP price as $45. |Image credit-innoGyan
One of the reasons for the huge price difference between Apple and Qualcomm is that the latter has to turn around and sell Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 to buyers while still pricing the chips high enough to make a good profit. It’s inevitable. Apple, on the other hand, uses chips that TSMC builds for its devices, which requires one less step in pricing.
Additionally, Qualcomm will debut its own CPU cores for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 rather than licensing Cortex CPU cores from Arm. Qualcomm’s flagship AP prices may rise this year as it tries to recover some of the development costs of these cores.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will be announced by Qualcomm at the Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii from October 21st to October 23rd.
