We will know this year for sure if Qualcomm's statements was PR spin as Polaris is 14LPP and Pascal is 16FF+. We should also get some transistor structural and electrical characteristics details from the likes of chipworks or techinsights as they analyze the Snapdragon 820.
They are pure spin. As I understand it, Qualcomm basically chose Samsung for two reasons:
1. Wafer prices - Samsung priced 14nm wafers fairly aggressively relative to TSMC.
2. Quid pro quo -- It is said that Samsung Mobile has mandated that its flagship devices use only Samsung-built chips.
Right now, Samsung Foundry is basically betting on Qualcomm to sustain its leading edge volumes. Apple is going away with the A10 and I strongly suspect for the 10nm A11 and beyond. MediaTek, HiSilicon, Spreadtrum, NVIDIA, etc. are all seemingly choosing TSMC.
TSMC also has the benefit of having all of the 2nd and 3rd wave customers (i.e. SSD controllers, display driver ICs, etc.) generally choosing them.
IMO, Samsung did a very good job of running a nice fancy PR campaign by being "first" to 14nm (even though the technology is widely believed to have been ripped off from TSMC), but I think at 10nm and 7nm you will start to see TSMC really pulling away from Samsung.
BTW, I wouldn't buy the spin from AMD about 14nm being "better" than TSMC's 16nm (see: Robert Hallock comments on reddit). This is taken from AMD's latest form 10-K:
AMD form 10-K said:
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. On March 2, 2009, we entered into a Wafer Supply Agreement (WSA) with GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. (GF). The WSA governs the terms by which we purchase products manufactured by GF, a related party to us. Pursuant to the WSA, we are required to purchase all of our microprocessor and APU product requirements, and a certain portion of our GPU product requirements from GF with limited exceptions.