After Apple released iPhone 16, many domestic mobile phones are also gearing up to release new flagship mobile phones. It is expected that a large wave of domestic flagship mobile phones will be released in October. This batch of domestic mobile phones is expected to truly surpass Apple in terms of performance, and the chips they rely on come from Qualcomm in the United States.

It is reported that Qualcomm will release its new chip Snapdragon 8G4 in October, which will be Qualcomm's return to self-developed cores and abandonment of ARM's public cores. According to geekbench data, the single-core and multi-core scores of Snapdragon 8G4 are 3236 and 10049 points, respectively; Apple's A18 single-core and multi-core scores are 3114 and 6666 points, respectively. In this way, the single-core and multi-core performance of Snapdragon 8G4 will surpass Apple's A18. In the past, Qualcomm and MediaTek's chip performance surpassed Apple's A-series processors only in multi-core performance, while single-core performance has always lagged behind.

Snapdragon 8G4 will be the first time that Android mobile phone chips truly surpass Apple in all aspects, which will truly equip domestic mobile phones with the ability to compete with Apple. After all, due to the lagging single-core performance of their chips, they have a huge gap with Apple in the high-end mobile phone market. Domestic mobile phone brands using Qualcomm chips have only occupied a single-digit share for a long time.

For domestic mobile phones, Qualcomm has another significance in that they need Qualcomm's patent licensing to compete in overseas markets. Among many Chinese mobile phone brands, only two or three have strong patent capabilities, while other domestic mobile phone brands have to rely on Qualcomm's patents for protection, highlighting the significance of Qualcomm to domestic mobile phones beyond chips.

For Chinese mobile phones, their flagship mobile phones in overseas markets also generally use Qualcomm chips. It is by relying on Qualcomm chips that they can truly enter the international market. Among domestic mobile phone brands, those with overseas sales accounting for 50% or even up to 70% use Qualcomm chips, further highlighting the importance of Qualcomm chips to them.

Currently, among many mobile phone chip companies worldwide, Qualcomm used to adopt self-developed chip architectures, but has shifted to using ARM public cores since Snapdragon 835, and now Qualcomm has returned to self-developed core architectures and surpassed Apple.

This proves that adopting ARM public cores cannot achieve the goal of surpassing Apple, as ARM's own R&D capabilities are limited and need to consider costs. Therefore, ARM's public cores have never been comparable to Apple's. This time, Qualcomm's self-developed cores can surpass Apple, which actually stems from Apple's technology. Qualcomm's self-developed core architecture comes from the acquired nuvia, and most of nuvia's R&D personnel come from Apple's A-series processor R&D team. It can be said that Apple's chips have overturned Apple's chips.

Among several domestic chip companies, they are still using ARM public cores. One of them cannot even outsource its chips to TSMC due to well-known reasons and can only outsource them to domestic chip foundries, which are backward in chip process technology, resulting in a significant lag in chip performance compared to Apple.

It can be seen that due to various reasons, domestic chips can hardly surpass Qualcomm and Apple before achieving truly self-developed cores and developing advanced processes that surpass TSMC. However, for most consumers, domestic chips can already meet most needs and serve as substitutes when Qualcomm chips are unavailable, preventing a complete bottleneck.

Domestic mobile phones have also surpassed Apple in shipment volume before. Two domestic mobile phone brands have surpassed Apple in shipment volume, with one using Qualcomm chips for half of its shipments and the other almost entirely relying on Qualcomm chips. Both demonstrate their dependence on Qualcomm chips, which may be a dilemma for domestic mobile phones.