Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I'am still curious to see when Apple will hit the borderline for being anti competitive by going all in-house. I'am talking about hardware and not software monopoly.

How would Apple be considered anti-competitive in this case? They are not preventing other companies from developing or selling hardware. Nor are they selling any of their chips, so they are not using their size to force other companies out of the market.
 
I'am still curious to see when Apple will hit the borderline for being anti competitive by going all in-house. I'am talking about hardware and not software monopoly.
How is that anti-competitive? There’s absolutely no requirement that you have to buy parts from someone else instead of making them yourself. That’s simply not a thing. They aren’t even competing with Intel or qualcomm when they do that.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if they buy GlobalFoundries to eventually make their own chips in-house as well.

i would be somewhat surprised. There’s a reason all of the most successful chipmakers do not own fabs. I mean, they don’t even own Foxconn, for the same reasons.

One thing I do expect them to be thinking about next is imaging sensors.
 
But weren't they developing one with Intel for years? 4G and 5G as well. I would say they just continue.
The initial plan was to use a 5G modem that was designed by Intel but Intel couldn't deliver. Intel had many problems bringing that modem to market. As a result, Apple signed a six-year deal with Qualcomm (short-term plan to bring 5G capability to iPhones), acquired Intel's modem division and are now developing their own modem.
 
I wonder what the implications (if any) this has on security and location tracking with cellular usages. Just as Intel chips were less secure for apple devices than an M1, will apple cellular chips be more secure than Qualcomm?

is current location tracking by ISP’s based on towers and calls being done irrespective of the chip in the phone (triangulation from towers etc?) or does the chip have a say in what data can be interpreted by the ISP? Interesting to know if someone in that field could share
 
It’s about time they addressed it. They spent all the money on Intel’s business and we hadn’t heard jack.
 
It’s about time they addressed it. They spent all the money on Intel’s business and we hadn’t heard jack.

Unless you are a stock holder I'm not seeing how that matters. And I'm not sure it even matters if you are.
 
That day can’t come soon enough. iPhone and iPads will have way better standby endurance.
 
One thing I like about this is that we are finally back at seeing a product that has a brand name completely/mostly built by the brand owner. Almost all modern products are a collection of products from different manufacturers that is customised by the brand owner.

For example, the Sony Playstation 5 probably has nothing Sony in it except the BD drive...maybe.

Apple has zero incentive to do that. Not going to happen.

Why not? Samsung is selling screens to Apple for their iPhones. It will make Apple even more money.
 
nothing really new in this article, and the essence is: it will take years for Apple to build competitive modems ...

Apple’s Greatest Chip Challenge Yet: Replacing Qualcomm Modems​

Mark Gurman and Ian King

 
The more i see this, the more i think Apple wanting to break ties with the major chip makers, Some like they just can't do themselves in-house.. (possible screens for iPhone), luckily high prices stands in their way.. to prevent major companies... (aka... They will alwas have Foxconn or other related Taiwanese companies)
 
No surprise. Apple getting back with Qualcomm was clearly a marriage of convenience (probably the only way to get decent 5G radios for the iPhone). Clearly Apple wants to ditch them as soon as possible with all the bad blood of the last few years.
Wonder if they buy Sharp or somebody to move displays/batteries in-house. I’d assume the end goal is to be 100% vertical.
 
RAM is relatively simple, not much to innovate there, doubtful they'd see any benefit. Same with flash storage.

Apple already uses their own controller, so all they're buying is the raw flash storage. Little upside to making your own.
DRAM is a commodity business. And barrier of entry is far too high even for Apple.

Apple strategy has always been squeezing as much off their supplier as possible. Basically saying, we know how much it cost to make these chips, we know how much it cost to design, and we only want to pay you this + 20-30% profit margin for your chip. Where Apple view 20-30% cost they accept and focus their time and energy elsewhere. Some times it works, sometimes it doesn't. Broadcom has threaten to sell their WiFi business twice should Apple continue to push ahead. For others like Dialog Semiconductor they just sold those part to Apple.

Apart from WiFi and Bluetooth, which is used in all Apple Products, I dont see any other components that requires them to bring in house for cost saving. And so far the price for Broadcom WiFi seems to be within Apple's tolerance. But down the road once Apple has more experience in 5G modem, may be they will make their own All in one 5G + WiFi + Bluetooth solution.
Most DRAM is a commodity, yes. But Apple has an unusual memory architecture. Does commodity DRAM offer the ideal design to work with it? Or might Apple benefit from a customized in-house design—one optimized to integrate synergistically with that architecture? Perhaps a specialized variant of HBM memory, say, or maybe an entirely different design.

Sure, it would likely cost more for Apple to do this than to buy off-the-shelf RAM. But Apple, with its premium prices, has the flexibility to pay for premium components, if they provide a significant performance boost.

The "barrier to entry" into the market would only apply if Apple wanted to compete on price/performance in producing commodity RAM that it then planned to sell into the general market. But neither of those would apply to the RAM Apple would build for itself (it's not going to be commodity RAM, and they're not going to be competing for RAM sales, b/c they're not going to be supplying it to anyone but themselves).
 
Most DRAM is a commodity, yes. But Apple has an unusual memory architecture. Does commodity DRAM offer the ideal design to work with it? Or might Apple benefit from a customized in-house design—one optimized to integrate synergistically with that architecture? Perhaps a specialized variant of HBM memory, say, or maybe an entirely different design.

Sure, it would likely cost more for Apple to do this than to buy off-the-shelf RAM. But Apple, with its premium prices, has the flexibility to pay for premium components, if they provide a significant performance boost.

The "barrier to entry" into the market would only apply if Apple wanted to compete on price/performance in producing commodity RAM that it then planned to sell into the general market. But neither of those would apply to the RAM Apple would build for itself (it's not going to be commodity RAM, and they're not going to be competing for RAM sales, b/c they're not going to be supplying it to anyone but themselves).
Apple only uses premium components as a last resort, unless visible/touchable
As for modems, don’t fool yourself into believing M1 is indicative of what they can do in this area. Patent system is a sham, just look at the BS Apple gets granted on a regular basis with no detail on how to actualise, very broad. With QC’s portfolio of patents, Apple will have to pony up for licences.
They would be better off ditching 5g, it’s a joke, and optimising 4g
 
Apple only uses premium components as a last resort, unless visible/touchable
Nope, Apple's laptops have had some of the fastest SSDs in the business. This was particularly true during the early days of SSDs, when Apple used SSD components that put their laptops well ahead of nearly everyone else's. This certainly cost them more, but they did it because it gave them a clear lead in performance. And their decision to do this was the opposite of a "last resort", since they could have instead simply done what pretty much everyone else did, which was to use less expensive standard-grade components.

There's no reason why they wouldn't do the same with custom memory, if it also gave them a big performance boost relative to the increased cost.

[If you want to make a broad generalization about what constrains Apple from using the fanciest components in its laptops, it's this: Apple only uses top-end components in its laptops when they're not too big and don't consume too much power. That's what keeps them from using the fastest video processors (well, that and their conflict with NVIDIA), as well as 4k screens.]
As for modems, don’t fool yourself into believing M1 is indicative of what they can do in this area. Patent system is a sham, just look at the BS Apple gets granted on a regular basis with no detail on how to actualise, very broad. With QC’s portfolio of patents, Apple will have to pony up for licences.
They would be better off ditching 5g, it’s a joke, and optimising 4g
Not sure what you're responding to here, since I never mentioned modems, just RAM.
 
Last edited:
I'm hoping that Apple's modem leapfrogs other technologies, by not only having 5G, and FM (which they don't enable or use currently), but also ATSC 3.0 chip technology for free over the Air 4k broadcast TV reception in iPads and iPhones. It is already available for nearly free licensing and Free broadcast TV will be in cars and is now possible in cell phones too if anyone has the balls to anger the carriers as it will offer free internet content too without data fees. I hope the FCC ultimately mandates this and the new administration will have a new FCC chief, so we'll see. TV and cell phones have just one thing in common, regulated by the FCC, so yes, the FCC could mandate ATSC 3.0 not only on TV manufacturers and eventually will, but could on cell phones too. Right now no one knows that free 4K content is coming, but it is. About 7-8 different markets now in 2020 in America.
Pre-COVID, atsc3 was to have major rollouts throughout large numbers of US cities ... that did get rolled back ... and the lack of hardware producers has curtailed this rollout ... I agree, 3rd or 4th quarter 2021 it’ll be heavily broadcasting ...

atsc 3 brings a worldwide uniform standard ... it debuted inter Seoul summer olympics ... its adoption has been turtle slow
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.