Why the Galaxy S25 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7 will get a price hike in 2025

Per SamMobile, the Galaxy S24 Ultra pricing will probably remain the same as its predecessor, and with no indication that Samsung plans on hiking the price of its top-of-the-line flagship phone, we can expect the device to start at $1,199. But the following year we could see the Galaxy S25 Ultra launch with a higher starting price. That's because the Oryon CPU cores found on the Snapdragon X Elite PC chip will be coming to Snapdragon Mobile Platform chips in 2025.

Qualcomm Senior Vice President Chris Patrick said that while the custom CPU cores don't have to raise the price of a chip, they help Qualcomm give a chipset the right amount of the 3Ps: performance, power consumption, and pricing. Patrick did say that Qualcomm plans on raising the price of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 as the San Diego-based chipmaker aims to have the chipset achieve "astonishing levels of performance."

To keep Qualcomm from using its pricing gun with reckless abandon (remember, this is the company with the manta 'no license, no chips'), Samsung keeps its Exynos chipsets around to keep Qualcomm honest. However, the Exynos 2400 is a powerful deca-core chipset and has had some strong benchmark results. We could see Samsung use the Exynos 2400 SoC on the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ in most markets while the Galaxy S24 Ultra is expected to be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy everywhere. In the U.S. and China, the latter chip would also be used to power the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+.

Regardless, Samsung is going to have to deal with a higher-priced chipset for the Galaxy S25 Ultra which means higher costs and a drop in profit margin unless it uses lower-priced components (like a homegrown Exynos SoC) or raises the price of its 2025 top-of-the-line flagship phone. The same pricing scenario could also play out with 2025's Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7 as the foldables could see their price hiked above the current starting prices of $1,799 and $799 respectively.

It's too early to figure out what Samsung is going to do to boost its profit margin on these phones, but if you plan on buying the Galaxy S25 Ultra, the Galaxy Z Fold 7, or the Galaxy Z Flip 7 in 2025, you might want to start collecting change in a change jar starting now.