Every year, tech reviewers position the latest chip as much better than the old one, and the same thing happens next year, and the next. The Snapdragon 8 Elite was better than the Gen 3, which was better than the Gen 2, and so on.
If the “flagship” chips are so good, why not just stop to save cost? Why upgrade the chipset every year with minimal gains?
If everyone stuck with the same generation of chip, smartphones could be cheaper (good for consumers) OR profit margins could be increased (good for companies). Or maybe a mix of both.
What drives the yearly update in chips? AI maybe?
I have not found an answer to this part:I realized I just quoted the first 3 paragraphs of the post, so lets stay at the clarification. I haven’t found the answer to OPs question.
And to clarify what I don’t understand: each year flagship phone’s performance don’t seem to increase significantly. Regarding real world performance, not benchmarks.
That’s why the question is why don’t they keep the previous chipset until more meaningful gains. As OP suggested, they could either lower the price, or have more profit. Users would not feel the difference, and there’s plenty of other things the manufacturer can improve or experiment with.
If the concern is that people would say “ah it’s the same chipset!” and they wouldnt buy it, then the manufacturer could just replace that with another one that has roughly the same cost and performance.