Samsung Electronics and HiSilicon Technologies both have accelerated the developments of their handset solutions, including 8-core, 64-bit and 4G LTE-enabled chips and plan to ship more chips outside the companies, according to industry sources.

Currently, Sony Mobile Communications, LG Electronics and HTC purchase over 90% of handset solutions they need from Qualcomm, while China-based vendors including Lenovo, ZTE, Coolpad, Xiaomi Technology and TCL are using chipsets mostly from Qualcomm and MediaTek.

For product differentiation and production risk control, handset vendors are willing to see more chipset suppliers which can offer competitive chips, and therefore, are not ruling out the possibility of purchasing chips from Samsung and HiSilicon, said the sources.

Samsung has continued to expand its Exynos family products with the portfolio including 8- and 6-core processors, and Exynos ModAP LTE modem chips. Meanwhile, Samsung has also released reference designs based on Exynos CPUs as a means to compete with Qualcomm Reference Design (QRD) and MediaTek's reference designs.

China-based smartphone vendor Meizu has adopted Exynos CPUs for its MX-series flagship modes, indicated the sources.

HiSilicon has launched its 8-core Kirin 920 processors, supporting LTE Cat.6 technology. Parent company Huawei has utilized the Kirin 920 for its Honor 6 smartphone and is also expected to use the chip for its mid-range and high-end Ascend series, the sources noted, adding that HiSilicon also plans to sell the chip to other handset vendors.

HiSilicon has also begun shipping its Kirin 910 processors to Hewlett-Packard (HP) for the production of HP Slate 8+ tablets, revealed the sources.