Samsung will reportedly be turning to MediaTek to deliver chipsets for entry-level smartphones. The chipmaker's Chairman, Tsai Ming Kai, refused to discuss the recent issues relating to the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. The executive made a point of stating that the handset manufacturer is a client of the company, explaining his refusal to answer questions about the phablet. That would seem to indicate that Samsung has signed some sort of contract with MediaTek.
For its low-end phones, Samsung currently employs chips made from manufacturers that are not well known, like Spreadtrum. Or, it relies on less powerful or older generation Exynos chips. For example, the entry level Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) is driven by the Exynos 3475 chipset, which features a quad-core 1.3GHz CPU and the Mali-T720 GPU. Future models like this might be powered by a MediaTek SoC instead.
Samsung is rumored to have contracted for 10% of the low-end chips produced by MediaTek. The latter is making a name for itself with its high-end Helio lineup. That includes the deca-core CPU powered Helio X20 and Helio X25. We wouldn't expect Sammy to have any interest in these chips considering it already has the high-end covered with its powerful top-of-the-line Exynos chipsets.
