Samsung Galaxy S8, S8+ Shortages Anticipated As Qualcomm Struggles In Producing Chipsets

Samsung is just hours away from unveiling its highly anticipated Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ handsets, but consumers could be taken aback when they find out that there could be limited supplies of the Android phones at launch. A report fresh from Samsung’s homeland South Korea is saying that there could be shortages because Qualcomm is not producing enough Snapdragon 835 chipsets.

According to the Korea Herald, industry sources have leaked that Samsung’s new flagship phone may fail to meet the demand from consumers at launch because Qualcomm is struggling with chip production. The process of making Snapdragon 835 chipsets is said to be going at a “sluggish” rate, and this could affect the sale of the S7 successor. It goes without saying that the larger Galaxy S8+ could also be affected by this shortage since it is also sporting the 835 CPU.

In South Korea and some markets, the new Galaxy-branded devices are launching with Samsung’s own Exynos 8895, but even this chipset is being manufactured at a slow rate. Hence, all models of the S8 and S8+ are believed to fall behind market expectations. This would be a big problem for Samsung should the words of the industry sources turn out to be true. After all, the smartphone market has become very cutthroat with many of the rival products being made available to consumers at an earlier date.

The idea that there could be Galaxy S8 and S8+ shortages at launch is not new. Last week, serial leakster Evan Blass took to Twitter to claim that poor yields of the Snapdragon 835 and Exynos 8895 chipsets will likely cause at least one week of delay in the launch of both devices on the market. Instead of the original April 21 release date, Blass said Samsung is likely to move the launch to April 28 for both handsets, as first reported by Phone Arena.

Samsung’s new handsets are likely to be met with a huge demand, considering that they are said to boast cutting-edge technologies. The Galaxy S8 is anticipated to come with a 5.8-inch 1440 x 2960 display, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal memory, a microSD card slot for up to 256GB, a 12-megapixel rear camera, an 8-megapixel front-facing snapper and a 3000mAh battery. On the other hand, the Galaxy S8+ is expected to come with similar specs save for the larger 6.2-inch display and bigger 3500mAh battery. Both premium devices are expected to debut with a back-located fingerprint scanner, an iris scanner on the front, IPS68 certification and Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box.