14 DAY TRIAL // Apple this month signed a lucrative deal with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to produce the chips that will power its future iPhones, iPads and iPod touch players.
Apple this year is on track to release the iPhone 5S, an incremental upgrade of the current iPhone model, analysts say. It will most likely use an A7 chip with enhanced capabilities.
The A7 will be the last A-series chip made by Samsung, or so it is being suggested by a Wall Street Journal report which takes a close look at the Korean company’s failing marriage with Apple.
Come 2014, TSMC will be taking on the task to produce the A-series chip, the brains of each and every iPhone and iPad sold today. If Apple ends up using the A7 in its iPhone 5S, then the first chip to be made by TSMC (for the iPhone 6) will be the A8.
“Apple's deal this month to start buying chips from TSMC is a milestone,” reads the report.
According to TSMC executives cited in the article, “As early as 2010, Apple and TSMC started discussing working together to build the chips [and] In 2011, TSMC senior executive Chiang Shang-yi met Apple officials to discuss collaborating on the complex process.”
As the story goes, Apple proposed to invest its own money in TSMC to create spaces (factories) dedicated to producing the A-series chip.
TSMC declined, as “the company wanted to maintain its independence and manufacturing flexibility,” according to some of its executives.
It is unclear how those disputes finally dissolved, but as of this month TSMC is partners with Apple and “plans to start mass-producing the chips early next year using advanced ‘20-nanometer’ technology, which makes the chips potentially smaller and more energy-efficient.”
In 2014 Apple is expected to unveil the iPhone 6 with an all-new design and breakthrough technologies. The Cupertino giant is also rumored to plan the introduction of an iWatch, a wearable wireless computer that looks like a watch.