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TSMC to Begin Trial Production of Apple's A6X Chip This Quarter
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In Android land anything written that doesnt worship Android will be condemned. Kudo to him for having the gut to tell the truth !
Yes, how can it be forgotten??
The world stoped spinning!
The planet froze! Humanity entered the dark age!
We will never be the same again.
Let's see.
LG is both an Apple supplier and a smartphone maker. That doesn't seem to be doing so well for them in the smartphone front.
To suggest TSMC even having the slight possibility of entering consumer electronics neglects the fact that TSMC gains very little from leaving their focus on semiconductor manufacturing. To think otherwise means that you don't understand the difference between Foxconn and TSMC, both Taiwanese companies who do manufacturing. I will also flat out say that there is no chance either company will ever become direct competitors, unless somebody makes a severely bad business decision, on the same scale of DEC, Commodore, and Osborne.
TSMC is in the dominant position of their field. A field which is also extremely hard to enter successfully. A field which is also extremely expensive and risky to expand in. If their business leaders were dumb enough to defocus, then I'm fairly sure pretty much all of their competitors would be cheering them on in their new ventures.
There's a reason AMD spun off GF, you know.
Who else would you suggest? Qualcomm? They LEFT the phone business because their chips make them more profits. Not surprising that it's a better move to focus on chips when everybody needs to license your stuff to implement 3G.
And how is this good news? Samsung is pretty much market leader in anything ( including smartphones ) for a reason. They produce quality.
Good luck for Apple if they are boycotting Samsung, it will hurt Apple more than Samsung in the end as Apple products will turn to garbage without the quality of Samsung.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
First, I said nothing about TSMC leaving their existing business to enter the consumer business. No need inventing stuff to make a point sound better.
If I'm TSMC, I keep doing the profitable business I'm doing and am always looking for my own next big thing. Where can I grow beyond what I'm doing now? (NOT how can I get rid of my current business and become something else)
If I can see myself as a modest equivalent of Samsung's "parts" business, then Samsung may be a good proxy of a big competitor in terms of how I might expand my business. Maybe TSMC dreams of becoming the next Samsung by looking at what they have that is similar to what Samsung has and where else Samsung is that they are not? Competitive analysis to drive business growth is a fundamental of strategic planning. What "we" are doing that is like Samsung is working well; what else is Samsung doing that we could do?
Second, if it is indeed "A field which is also extremely hard to enter successfully. A field which is also extremely expensive and risky to expand in" they should be able to have some security in their deals with partners like Apple so that they could take some risk in growing beyond what they do now. If it is as hard and expensive to enter successfully as you imply, where's Apple going to go (back to Samsung)?
Third: "If their business leaders were dumb enough to defocus," Would "dumb" apply to Apple before Apple launched iPod? How about iPhone? In both of those, Apple had to "defocus" to try some new strategic thrusts. But let me guess, that was "different" because it was closer to their core business than TSMC and other partners defocusing from say- making the crucial guts of technology to putting those guts in a metal case with a glass front and using a free OS... just like Samsung. You know the case and the glass is not the hard or complicated parts to source and/or make.
Intel is apparently defocusing in trying to enter the consumer TV hub business soon. But that can't possibly happen because a chip maker would never try to break into some new business opportunities in the consumer products space. Let me guess: that's different too.
Google was just search. It would make no sense for a search-focused company to get into the mobile phone OS space... especially if they were going to give away that OS for free, right? How about cars that drive themselves? Solar panels? Cable TV subscriptions via fiber?
Kodak stuck with what they considered their core- the film business. And where did that relentless focus get them?
Nevertheless, I give here (for now). Clearly, we wish to celebrate Apple sticking it to Samsung for "ripping off" Apple's ideas and becoming a copycat competitor while at the same time finding it practically offensive/impossible/etc that any other Asian company partner might try to do the same. Samsung has done very well with that "strategy" and it makes perfect sense (apparently only to me) that other companies might look at Samsung's success doing exactly that and think about whether they could take a shot at doing something similar too.
Believe what you wish and we can let the passage of time (and the desire for business growth at companies other than just Apple) prove this out... or not.
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Once Apple leaves Samsung, Samsung will be their own only large customer. Texas Instruments is leaving the mobile chips business due to the difficulty of competing. Ericcson is abandoning their joint venture with ST, who can't get any major design wins. Marvell is relegated to parts of the market other than the SoC business. Does that sound like a good market to enter? Not to mention the fact that the only existing relationship between a fabless company using another company's fabs and competing in the same market (apple and Samsung) is a relationship about to dissolve. Why risk that?
They could go to global foundries or UBM.
Apple is a consumer electronics company. TSMC is largely a services company. Moreover, it's not even a service they can leverage with consumers like kindle or Zune. What confidence would they have that they can offer anything new or better someone else can't?
Intel makes wireless cards, motherboards, develops standards, creates technologies like WiDi, etc. All they would need to enter that space is a box for their components. TSMC would have to add hundreds of engineers to get the design expertise and shift their marketing focus for more consumer notice. It would be a huge undertaking.
Most of what google does drives their ad revenue and user data mountains. Most of what they do speaks to that ultimate end. Their fiber service allows more people to use their services. A driverless car leverages their location data. They don't do stuff for the hell of it.
And executed poorly and got beat by people who didn't like Nikon and Canon. You make it sound like no one cam succeed in the camera business.
Samsung has built its consumer business for decades and it has always been their business to try everything. TSMC doesn't have that. Again, the same reasoning can be used for every single supplier of Apple, including Corning the glass maker. Making the physical chip doesn't give TSMC any advantage in putting a phone together outside cheaper chips.
Except Kodak didn't have a "relentless focus". They invented the first digital camera and released the first professional digital camera too. Plus they always had a wide range of business, including supplying military and NASA with digital sensors and mirrors. Also Kodak had numerous consumer digital cameras, printers as well as picture frames. Does that sound like a "relentless focus" to you??
It's not matter of "believe". It's backing up what you believe with sound reasoning and evidence. Many people on this thread have given you how TSMC differs from Samsung or LG but you keep refusing all the facts.
I said nothing about leaving their existing business. I said leaving their focus on semiconductor manufacturing; as in, trying to do unrelated stuff on the side such as consumer electronic devices. "No need inventing stuff to make a point sound better."
Except TSMC isn't "a modest equivalent of Samsung's "parts" business".
Samsung's semiconductor business has two different parts.
One is the manufacturing. That's TSMC's game, where with the exception of Intel, they're top of the world.
The other is chip design, which is what all of TSMC's clients (and Samsung's competititors) do.
TSMC's already got security. They control their expansion of fabs, which are of higher demand than clients. They turned down exclusivity deals on existing fabs with Qualcomm and Apple already, if you haven't read. If Apple or Qualcomm want guaranteed production capacity, Apple and/or Qualcomm will have to either take the existing deal like everybody else, or help fund the costs of a new factory, therefore taking on the expansion risks.
I was one of the first people who as soon as the iPod launched, thought they were nuts.
But given that they were in a shaky market position, and had to change, it turned out to be worth it.
But yes, going from exclusively semicon manufacturing to consumer electronics is significantly farther in core competencies than from large computer to small computer, especially given that the iPod wasn't even close to being Apple's first portable electronics device.
I'd assume you have no electrical engineering experience, or else you'd know this.
Furthermore, cases and glass are deceptively difficult.
Prior to the iPhone, there was no source for Gorilla Glass, and no mass manufacturing method for cutting/shaping it.
You should read up on why the unibody macs were significant. And how Gorilla Glass works.
Intel is a different story.
Intel faces several problems:
1) Shift to ARM slowly kills their cash cow. Both in terms of developer expertise and demand. Intel knows this because it's been their tactic for the last several decades. Now they're on the receiving end of it.
2) Semicon process manufacturing r/d is slowing down because it's simply harder. So they know it'll be hard to maintain their gap over other foundries. If they were simply a foundry, not a big deal. The problem here is that that's how they've maintained an advantage over AMD, and that advantage is extremely important for getting Atom to be somewhat competitive to ARM in terms of power efficiency.
Intel isn't actually trying to enter the consumer TV service business. They're trying to develop a base platform they can sell to tv service companies in order to ensure people still keep buying Intel chips. Just like their smartphone initiatives.
With that said, Intel's also known for making some pretty dumb marketing-driven-engineering decisions.
When will TSMC face this sort of problem you might ask?
1) If other foundries catch up in production capacity, it'll be harder to maintain clients.
2) If a breakthrough new integrated electronics manufacturing technique is pioneered, which is cheaper than silicon and more performant.
If these happen, then it's time to diversify.
Google's product is eyeballs. Everything else is an overall money sink.
Like I said above, if a breakthrough new integrated electronics manufacturing technique is pioneered. And TSMC ignores it. Then it's a Kodak (business) moment.
And I counter with: LG has not done very well with that "strategy". So you can't expect that to be a certainly reasonable direction for any company to go.
Maybe, maybe not.
Apple has, over the past few years, showing a remarkable willingness to finance the expansion of plant and tools of its suppliers (subject, of course, to various covenants about who owns the improvements, and how they can be used). For all we know, Apple has helped TSMC build a complete new fab line, and has grand plans for how it might be used, but those plans include restrictions like it only gets used to make Apple's chips, and the very latest Broadcom and Qualcomm chips (which will only be sold to Apple, not on the open market).
TSMC and A6X, A7 definitely
if you someone can read TAIWANESE (Chinese Traditional)
There is a good & detail article below...
http://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=291&t=2959321&last=40972875
if you someone can read TAIWANESE (Chinese Traditional)
There is a good & detail article below...
http://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=291&t=2959321&last=40972875
TSMC enter the consumer business ?
TSMC enter the consumer business ?
From my view been a Local person here (in TAIWAN)
Simply not, and unnecessary
Simply not the type of of TSMC' CEO (Morris Chang)
He is a visionary person with sense of obligation and justice
TSMC enter the consumer business ?
From my view been a Local person here (in TAIWAN)
Simply not, and unnecessary
Simply not the type of of TSMC' CEO (Morris Chang)
He is a visionary person with sense of obligation and justice