This is hearsay, but from what I understood from talking about this long ago with someone deeper in the business, the issues are more organizational than techni

This is hearsay, but from what I understood from talking about this long ago with someone deeper in the business, the issues are more organizational than technical, with Apple getting huge benefits of both vertical integration and avoiding possible anticompetitive probes. This results in Samsung's SoC team having to design each Exynos like it was a la carte offering, and mobile team having to "shop" like normal client, without being able to do SoC and device design in lockstep. Which means mobile team can't specify every last bit of feature they want, and SoC team can't splurge on cache and the like because then the prices might go beyond what would make the SoC theoretically profitable on "open market".