Samsung Galaxy S25 outsells all Snapdragon 8 Elite rivals combined

Near the beginning of the year, market analyst Ming-Chi Kuo stated that Samsung may have set a shipment target of 40 million units for the Galaxy S25 series. According to new information, Samsung exceeded 20 million Galaxy S25 sales by the end of June and outsold every other Snapdragon 8 Elite phone combined.

So far, Samsung's flagship series has been a global success, but to put things into perspective, we can compare global Snapdragon 8 Elite sales. Leaker @UniverseIce shared some fun facts that shed some light on Samsung's performance compared to its Android rivals.

The Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25+, and Galaxy S25 Ultra exclusively use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite chip globally. More specifically, these Samsung premium phones are equipped with a special edition “for Galaxy” Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.

What's interesting is that, thanks to the Galaxy S25 series, Qualcomm sold more than 20 million Snapdragon 8 Elite “for Galaxy” chips, making this version more popular than the standard one.

Reportedly, the combined sales of the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, which other Android OEMs used for their premium phones, were lower than 20 million.

In other words, not only does this show that Samsung's exclusive Elite version is by far the most popular in the world, but it also means that the Galaxy S25 series alone outsold all of its other Android competitors combined — at least those who used the standard version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip in their phones.

Samsung is Qualcomm's most profitable smartphone partner, judging by sales. Ironically, the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip, which Qualcomm and Samsung co-developed, is more popular than the base version developed solely by Qualcomm.

The chip version exclusive to Samsung has the main CPU cores clocked at a higher frequency of 4.47GHz, up from the standard version's 4.32GHz.

The source also mentions that the same story will likely repeat next year with the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2. The upcoming Galaxy S26 might get a “for Galaxy” version that will probably outsell its standard counterpart.