Samsung’s problems have long been documented, though it still seems strange to look at a company that remains, by far, the largest smartphone maker in the world. Nevertheless, after several disappointing quarters, the company has outlined initiatives designed to reverse its current course. Some of these have already been made public, such as the slimming down of its product launches.

One area that the company appears to be moving into is the design and manufacture of its own SoCs. While Samsung has long manufactured chips and SoCs for other companies – notably Apple – it has never designed its own. Apparently that is going to change over the course of the next few years.

Samsung clearly views itself as a premium brand, and the creation of its own SoCs may help to differentiate. It should be noted that the Exynos may be Samsung’s branded SoC, but it is not actually designed in-house. The upcoming Exynos 7 Application processor is expected to have a Samsung-designed, ARM-based AP, but the GPU will not be a Samsung product. This may be changing, however.

One of the few smartphone makers to design its own APs is Apple; most smartphone makers rely on chips from Qualcomm, MediaTek, and others. While that makes for an economy of scale and cost-competitiveness, it also makes it harder to differentiate on the hardware side. Samsung may develop capabilities to design and build a whole SoC or acquire them from an outside firm. AMD has been speculated as a potential takeover target by several industry experts and analysts, as the company has significant design expertise and is in need of a cash infusion to remain competitive with Intel and NVIDIA, among others.

What this means to smaller smartphone manufacturers is that Samsung may be considering cutting down on its low-end phones, preferring to stay with its high-end (and highly profitable) handsets. It could mean that smaller handset manufacturers will be in a better competitive position when all is said and done.