Samsung, Qualcomm Sign Multi-Year Strategic Relationship Agreement

Qualcomm on Thursday announced that it has signed a multi-year strategic relationship agreement with Samsung to work together in the growing market of mobile devices. The latest partnership is aimed at supporting various technology areas across a range of mobile devices and expands the existing relationship between the two companies to enable them to work together on the transition to 5G. Qualcomm and Samsung have also separately expanded their global patent cross-licence agreement, covering mobile devices and infrastructure equipment.

As a part of the new developments, Samsung will be withdrawing its interventions in Qualcomm's appeal against the Korean Free Trade Commission (KFTC) decision that was alleging the violation of competition laws by the San Diago-based chipmaker. The two companies are also set to drive growth for the global ecosystem. "Qualcomm has enjoyed a strong partnership with Samsung for many years, and we are pleased to further strengthen and extend our relationship through this amended cross-license agreement, alongside our continuing relationship as a key product supplier to Samsung," said Steve Mollenkopf, Chief Executive Officer, Qualcomm Incorporated, in a joint statement.

The multi-year agreement signed by Qualcomm and Samsung will support technologies powering next-generation Galaxy smartphones as well as infrastructure equipment. "We value our strategic relationship with Qualcomm Technologies and look forward to work together to deliver leading technologies in the years ahead," said TM Roh, Executive Vice President and the Head of Mobile R&D, Samsung Electronics, in the statement.

The timing of the new relationship developments between Qualcomm and Samsung is quite fascinating as the tech world is highly anticipating the launch of their new offerings at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 in Barcelona later this month. Also, it would be interesting to see how Samsung would expand the adoption of Qualcomm's Snapdragon SoCs alongside building new Exynos-based devices.