South Korean tech giant Samsung announced on Jan. 13 that it has started the mass production of microchips using its newest 14nm process, a fabrication node that will power the company's own Exynos 8 chips and the its rival Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820.

It has long been rumored that Samsung will manufacture the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chip, and the latest announcement only serves as a sort of confirmation. Using the company's second generation 14nm LPP process, the Snapdragon 820 is predicted to power several flagship devices that will hit the market within the first six months of 2016.

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A Qualcomm spokesperson told PC World, "Our decision to choose a specific process technology is based on its ability to meet our design goals for performance, power efficiency and yield."

Qualcomm's decision to let Samsung handle the manufacturing process of its flagship chipset came in as the company faced several hurdles back 2015. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 received several negative reviews and the company's reputation was tarnished by issues like overheating chipsets and excessive demand of battery power. Due to these issues, a handful of major smartphone manufacturers, especially in the Android market, dropped Qualcomm as their major supplier of chipsets.

One of these companies is Samsung itself which dropped the Snapdragon 810 processor and instead used its own Exynos processors to power its high-tiered flagship devices. The decision to change chipsets turned out to be a success for Samsung as its devices broke benchmark records, thanks to the Exynos chipsets.

It is important to note that Samsung's chip manufacturing division is a completely separate division from its smartphone business. Samsung's chip manufacturing arm is very much for hire, and one of its most prominent client is Apple which relies on the chipmaker to power its flagship iPhone devices, according to The Verge.

Despite the fact that Samsung is already manufacturing the Snapdragon 820 chipset, does not mean that it will power the company's upcoming Galaxy S7 line of devices. Although there are rumors claiming that the South Korean company is planning to use the Snapdragon 820 in models of the S7 series.

Industry analysts believe that by using the 14nm fabrication process, Samsung, at least in theory, can produce a chipset that consumes less power at a cheaper price.