Galaxy S25 Ultra Costs More to Make Than Its Predecessor; Here’s Why

Samsung launched the Galaxy S25 series earlier this year at its January Unpacked event. While the vanilla and Plus models were also out under the latest lineup, the talk of the town was the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Samsung launched the most powerful smartphone of the series at a price tag of $1299, the same as its predecessor. That said, a new report suggests that the Galaxy S25 Ultra costs more to make than the Galaxy S24 Ultra. 

The Galaxy S25 Ultra costs more to make because of the chipset it uses

Folks over at SammyGuru recently spotted a report by CounterPoint Research, which details the production cost of the 512GB storage variant of the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The report mentions that the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s bill of materials (BoM) was at least 3.4 percent higher than that of the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Anyone who understands the tidbits of the smartphone market would guess the reason behind it. As you may know, the Galaxy S25 Ultra packs Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite for the Galaxy. For the uninitiated, that’s a 3nm, overclocked version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. Apparently, the higher estimate in the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s BoM was due to the estimated 21 percent increase in the chipset costs.

Not to forget, Qualcomm officially said that the Snapdragon 8 Elite would see a price bump over the 8 Gen 3. Another factor that influenced the Galaxy S25 Ultra to cost more is the memory prices; they saw a “slight rise.” In short, the processor is the real culprit behind the production cost’s spike.

Samsung didn’t have to pay more for some components

The Counterpoint Research report also hinted that there were some areas where Samsung may have paid less. For example, the camera costs are 8 percent lower compared to 2024. The RF (cellular/wireless connectivity) costs were less than 10 percent. On top of that, the cost of casing/frame was down by nearly 8 percent. Moreover, the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s screen costs less than the S24 Ultra’s due to lower OLED panel prices.

Now you must be wondering, what if Qualcomm had offered the processor at a lower price? Well, Samsung could have dropped the price or upgraded the specs, but it didn’t. Also, Samsung wouldn’t have dropped the price of the Galaxy S25 Ultra even if it cost less to make. It’s rare to see smartphone manufacturers doing that. Do note that several other factors that influence the price of a smartphone, like marketing, labor cost, and R&D, weren’t included in the report.