This move doesn't stop Qualcomm from licensing ARMs reference cores, it only blocks them from designing their own in-house ARM cores like Apple does. The vast majority of Qualcomm chips currently on the market are built around reference cores, they only recently got back into the custom core game with their acquisition of Nuvia which also kicked off this dispute with ARM.
1. Qualcomm is still allowed to buy , use and sell ARM's Design IP. i.e Going back to Cortex X series.
2. Mediatek is available, mostly with latest ARM's IP. And extremely competitive. The only thing missing is Qualcomm Modem. It isn't Mediatek's modem are bad, they are at least far better than whatever Apple's Intel Modem had used or planned. The only problem is Qualcomm is go good customers still prefer it for the relatively little price they are paying for.
3. It is not like Android OEM cant make their own SoC. Especially considering the smartphone market can now be largely grouped as Apple, Samsung and Chinese. Together they are 95%+ of Market share.
There are probably Risc-V companies eagerly anticipating an opportunity in that space, but I don't know if any are in the performance ballpark right now.
Intel's latest Arrow Lake stuff, about to go on sale, is said to have much better power efficiency, FWIW. Something like half the wattage for roughly equivalent benchmark results, according to them.
Samsung phones use both, in a very literal sense. Their flagship devices usually have both Snapdragon and Exynos variants for different regions, and their lower end devices are mostly Exynos across the board.
The S23 line was an exception in using Snapdragon worldwide, but then the S24 line switched back to using Snapdragon in NA and Exynos everywhere else, except for the S24 Ultra which is still Snapdragon everywhere.
Yes it's a confusing mess, and it's arguably misleading when the predominantly NA-based tech reviewers and influencers get the usually superior QCOM variant, and promote it to a global audience who may get a completely different SOC when they buy the "same" device.
Last time I checked, the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon was faster and more energy efficient than the latest Exynos. Especially the top-binned chips that Samsung gets.
Still, the fact that Samsung can swap out the chip in their flagship product with virtually no change other than slightly different benchmark scores means that these chips are pretty much fungible. If either manufacturer runs into serious problems, the other one is ready to eat their market share for lunch.
Yes, Exynos is still behind in performance and thermals. Exynos modems are also still garbage and plague Pixel phones with issues. Though slowly improving with each generation, it's awful that it's being troubleshot in public over years.
What do Android OEMs do? They can’t use Apple chips, or now Qualcomm chips. Switching to another architecture is a big deal.
Would this basically hand the Android market to Samsung and their Exynos chips? Or does another short term viable competitor exist?