Premium Smartphone SoC Shipments to Surge in 2025, Boosting On-device GenAI SoC Growth
- GenAI Smartphone SoCs will account for 35% of global smartphone SoC shipments in 2025, growing by 74% YoY.
- 88% of the premium smartphone SoCs shipped in 2025 will be on-device GenAI capable.
- Mid-tier smartphone on-device GenAI-capable SoC shipments are projected to surge threefold YoY in 2025.
- On-device GenAI SoCs in the $300-$499 smartphone price tier are expected to capture a 38% shipment share in 2025, up from 12% in 2024.
- Premium smartphone SoC ASPs are increasingly driven by higher semi-content.
Seoul, Beijing, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Fort Collins, Hong Kong, London, New Delhi, Taipei, Tokyo –September 30, 2025
GenAI capable smartphone SoCs shipments will likely account for 35% of the global smartphone SoC shipments in 2025, according to Counterpoint’s latest Global Smartphone AP-SoC Shipment & Forecast Tracker by Model, Q2 2025. Shipments are expected to increase by 74% YoY in 2025, driven primarily by the increasing availability of GenAI capabilities across price tiers. Apple is poised to lead the segment this year with a 46% share, followed by Qualcomm at 35% and MediaTek with 12%.
To strengthen its position, Apple has partnered with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT with iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, allowing users to access ChatGPT’s capabilities. It has also developed a suite of generative models, including a 3-billion-parameter on-device language model and a larger server-based model accessible via Private Cloud Compute on Apple Silicon servers.
On the Android side, Qualcomm offers the AI Orchestrator, helping OEMs focus on services without managing complex LLMs, hardware, and software, while MediaTek’s NeuroPilot toolkit enables AI optimization across CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs. Both Qualcomm and MediaTek are actively working with Chinese smartphone OEMs to ensure efficient deployment of GenAI models on their SoCs.
Global Smartphone On-device GenAI SoC Shipment Share by Brand
88% of Premium SoCs Shipped Will be GenAI Capable in 2025
GenAI-capable premium smartphone SoC shipments will increase by 53% YoY in 2025, and 88% of premium SoCs shipped in 2025 will be GenAI capable, with leading players offering these capabilities in their products. Apple’s A19 and A19 Pro, along with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and Dimensity 9500, will drive further GenAI adoption in premium smartphones this year.
Commenting on global premium GenAI-capable SoCs, Research Analyst Shivani Parashar said, “With the rise of GenAI in smartphones since 2024, the race for more powerful AI computing units has accelerated. The peak AI performance of premium mobile platforms is expected to reach 100 TOPS in 2025, nearly four times higher than in 2021. This increasing GenAI adoption in premium smartphones is driving premium smartphone SoC ASPs higher, as smartphone SoC brands migrate to advanced nodes and integrate more semiconductor content, with significant enhancements across CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs to enable on-device GenAI.”
Parashar added, “Apple continues to lead in premium GenAI SoCs with its A-series chips, leveraging the Neural Engine and tight hardware-software integration for highly optimized performance. Meanwhile, Qualcomm is leading the premium Android market with its on-device GenAI capabilities, starting with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which focuses on multimodal AI through its Hexagon AI engine. MediaTek began its on-device GenAI push with the Dimensity 9300 series, emphasizing all-big-core designs, power efficiency, and advanced LLM-based applications.”
Note: Premium smartphone SoCs refer to SoCs from the Apple A series, Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 series, MediaTek Dimensity 9000 series, Exynos 2000 series, Hisilicon Kirin 9000 series, and Google Tensor series.
Growing Adoption of GenAI in Mid-range Smartphones
The $300-$499 segment is set to see a threefold YoY increase in GenAI-capable smartphone SoC shipments in 2025, accounting for 38% of the total. Qualcomm will lead this segment with a 57% shipment share, followed by MediaTek. MediaTek was the first to introduce GenAI-capable SoCs in this price range with its Dimensity 8000 series. Meanwhile, Qualcomm entered later with the Snapdragon 700 series and has also started targeting the $100-$299 segment with its Snapdragon 6 series GenAI-capable SoCs.
Commenting on the growing adoption of GenAI in the mid-price segment, Senior Analyst Parv Sharma said, “The growth is primarily driven by faster adoption of GenAI-capable SoCs in the mid-segment, as smartphone vendors aim to offer enhanced experiences to users. SoC players are optimizing LLMs to run efficiently on mid-range devices, and in the coming period, the penetration of GenAI-capable SoCs is expected to increase further as newer SoCs in the low-end segment are likely to offer GenAI capabilities.”
About Counterpoint Research
Counterpoint Research is a global market research firm specializing in products across the technology ecosystem. We advise a diverse range of clients – from smartphone OEMs to chipmakers and channel players to Big Tech – through our offices located in the world's major innovation hubs, manufacturing clusters and commercial centers. Our analyst team, led by seasoned experts, engages with stakeholders across the enterprise – from the C-suite to professionals in strategy, analyst relations (AR), market intelligence (MI), business intelligence (BI), product and marketing – to deliver services spanning market data, industry thought leadership and consulting. Our core areas of coverage include AI, Automotive, Consumer Electronics, Displays, eSIM, IoT, Location Platforms, Macroeconomics, Manufacturing, Networks and Infrastructure, Semiconductors, Smartphones and Wearables. Visit our Insights page to explore our publicly available market data, insights and thought leadership, and to understand our focus, meet our analysts and start a conversation.
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Author
Shivani Parashar
Shivani is a market researcher with over 11 years of market research and consumer insights experience. She started her career with Northern Trust Corporation and has since worked with multiple other market research & consulting agencies in India. Shivani has worked across a wide variety of industries, including but not limited to, technology, automotive, and logistics. She has handled multiple end-to-end research project across industries & functions covering a wide variety of subjects. Within Counterpoint, she focuses on components, especially semiconductor foundries and chipsets. Shivani holds an MBA degree in Marketing and an Engineering Degree in Electronics & Instrumentation.
Parv Sharma
Parv is a Senior Analyst with Counterpoint Technology Market Research based out of Gurgaon, India. He has over 10 years of experience at Counterpoint in market research and strategic consulting across the global technology and telecom sectors. He tracks the global semiconductor ecosystem, with a focus on HPC and data center compute, server CPUs, and AI infrastructure — covering competitive dynamics across Intel, AMD, Arm, Nvidia, and hyperscaler custom silicon. His research also spans the smartphone semiconductor ecosystem — including the Application Processor (AP)/SoC market, foundry, node and manufacturing technology, the RFFE ecosystem and value chain, and smartphone Bill of Materials (BoM) analysis — as well as the Automotive and Connected Car value chain. He leads a team driving data analysis and insights and contributes regularly to media coverage on semiconductors and AI infrastructure.