# Samsung Hands Its Galaxy Watch Chip to Qualcomm, Retiring Exynos > With no successor to its own Exynos W1000 in sight, Samsung has fitted the 2026 Galaxy Watch line with Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear Elite, a quiet concession that dents the company's home-grown silicon ambitions. - Source: Korea First - Canonical URL: https://koreafirst.tv/article/samsung-hands-its-galaxy-watch-chip-to-qualcomm-retiring-exynos - Author: Korea First Staff - Section: Tech - Published: 2026-07-23T10:54:09.232Z - Updated: 2026-07-23T11:45:49.937Z - Tags: Samsung, Qualcomm, Galaxy Watch, Exynos, Snapdragon, semiconductors --- Samsung has handed the brains of its newest smartwatches to Qualcomm, walking away from the in-house Exynos processor that powered the line for the past two years. The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 and the Galaxy Watch 9, unveiled at the company's Galaxy Unpacked event in London on Wednesday, both run on Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear Elite rather than a Samsung-designed chip. The change is subtle on the wrist and significant in the boardroom. For a company that has long sold itself as one of the few firms able to design its own chips and build its own devices, reaching for a rival's silicon in a flagship product is a reminder of how hard that vertical strategy has become to sustain. ## The chip that never arrived Samsung's watches had leaned on the Exynos W1000 since 2024, carrying the Galaxy Watch 7, the first Ultra and last year's Watch 8. The natural next step would have been a follow-up in that Exynos W family. It never materialized, leaving the 2026 lineup without a ready in-house option as the launch approached. Into that gap stepped Qualcomm, whose Snapdragon Wear Elite was introduced in March and built specifically for wearables. The processor carries a dedicated neural processing unit, the kind of on-device engine that powers the health tracking and outdoor activity features Samsung wanted to push in this generation. In the company's framing, it chose the part that best fit the product rather than the part that carried its own name. ## What each side is saying Qualcomm was happy to take the win in public. Chief executive Cristiano Amon said the Snapdragon Wear Elite was powering Samsung's Galaxy watches and enabling new levels of performance, efficiency and connected health features, adding that its ultra-efficient architecture allowed for longer battery life. Samsung was more measured. Co-chief executive Roh Tae-moon said the company would keep working closely with strategic partners and select the technology that best met the needs of each product. It was the language of a firm making a pragmatic call, not a triumphant one. ## Part of a wider Exynos retreat The watch decision does not stand alone. Samsung's mobile chips have been losing ground even inside its own phones, where Qualcomm parts increasingly show up in the models that matter most. The Galaxy Z Flip 8 runs an Exynos 2600 in Korea and Europe, but the units sold in the United States carry a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, a split that says a great deal about which chip Samsung trusts in its most competitive market. Taken together, the pattern points to a company still designing ambitious silicon while leaning on a competitor for the highest-stakes slots. That reliance chips away at the integration advantage Samsung has spent years advertising, the idea that owning the whole stack from foundry to finished device sets it apart. ## The stakes for Samsung's foundry The lost watch socket is small in volume but symbolic in weight. Every flagship that ships with a Qualcomm chip is a flagship that does not showcase Samsung's own design and manufacturing, and that matters at a moment when the company is trying to convince outside customers its foundry can compete for the most demanding orders. Winning back its own devices is the clearest proof it could offer, and for this round of watches that proof did not come. Whether Exynos returns to the wrist depends on how quickly Samsung can field a competitive successor. Until it does, the most personal device the company makes will be thinking with a rival's processor, and the story Samsung tells about controlling its own technology will carry an asterisk. --- Originally published by Korea First. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://koreafirst.tv/article/samsung-hands-its-galaxy-watch-chip-to-qualcomm-retiring-exynos.