That rumor about HTC using someone other than Qualcomm for chips is going around again

Did you know that Qualcomm has a small stake in HTC? Did you also know that the North American HTC One X was the best smartphone of 2012, but HTC made the terrible mistake of putting the Tegra 3 inside the global variant of the One X? Trivia aside, every few months there’s a rumor that gets passed around the Taiwanese supply chain that HTC will start making phones that use chips from someone other than Qualcomm. It must be that time of the year again, because the rumor is back according to Focus Taiwan.

First obvious question: Why is HTC using Qualcomm’s chips in the first place? This is an easy one to answer. Qualcomm makes the best chips (for Android phones) on the market. They’re the fastest. Most power efficient. And they’ve repeatedly proven themselves to be highly reliable. Small problem, though, Qualcomm’s chips aren’t the cheapest in the world. You can get chips that are “almost” as good from MediaTek, RockChip, AllWiner, and a whole bunch of other small companies you’ve probably never heard of it you live in either Europe or the United States.

So why switch to a one of these lesser known chip makers? Like I said earlier, they’re practically as good as Qualcomm’s chips, but they’re far cheaper. All those Samsung and HTC clones you see being sold on Chinese sidewalks, they probably have a MediaTek chip inside. And with HTC being in the situation they’re in, corners need to be cut.