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Apple Reportedly Signs Deal with Samsung for 14-nm A9 Chips Starting in 2015
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Realistically, Samsung peaked in smartphone profits
Samsung has been very successful at shipping and selling huge volumes of phones, but in reality, phone profits were 70% of Samsung's entire profit for last quarter. With margins lower compared to Apple, Samsung is more vulnerable to competition from up and coming Android OEM's in China.
Compare this with Apple's iPhone which generated 53% of profit for last quarter. Which company is more at risk to smartphone profit compression as the market matures, Apple or Samsung?
All that said, Apple probably see's Samsung as blocking all the other OEM's so that's probably a good thing, and Samsung see's semiconductor sales as germane to its long term profitability.
That Apple needs more fab's is almost a given, so Apple buying production into any and all of the major fabs would not surprise me.
Just wanted to add that 14nm might be seen to be a blocking move by Samsung and Apple to Intel's Atom making inroads in the market. A win for Samsung, Galaxy and iOS devices. How's that for frenemies!
Samsung has been very successful at shipping and selling huge volumes of phones, but in reality, phone profits were 70% of Samsung's entire profit for last quarter. With margins lower compared to Apple, Samsung is more vulnerable to competition from up and coming Android OEM's in China.
Compare this with Apple's iPhone which generated 53% of profit for last quarter. Which company is more at risk to smartphone profit compression as the market matures, Apple or Samsung?
All that said, Apple probably see's Samsung as blocking all the other OEM's so that's probably a good thing, and Samsung see's semiconductor sales as germane to its long term profitability.
That Apple needs more fab's is almost a given, so Apple buying production into any and all of the major fabs would not surprise me.
Just wanted to add that 14nm might be seen to be a blocking move by Samsung and Apple to Intel's Atom making inroads in the market. A win for Samsung, Galaxy and iOS devices. How's that for frenemies!
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Iran-Contra was "just business that's it". Then they all got together for beers after, blamed Israel...
HAHAHAAAA..... sorry had to laugh at this news. So many Apple enthusiasts jumped at the chance to bag Samsung when they heard of the TSMC deal. "Samsung is doomed", "Apple doesn't need Samsung", "that'll teach Samsung." Almost anything that could have been said by a fan boy was pretty much said. And now what? it's back pedal city. Never understood how people let their misguided hate get in the way of rational thinking.
I disagree. Probably a strategically calculated move. They probably knew they needed Samsung for these, and just wanted to strengthen their bargaining position. Which they did by diversifying. And then they signed a much better deal that they planned to sign all along.
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Whoa.... where did this analogy come from!
for all we know, this could have been the conversation
Samsung: OK OK OK, we'll do $2.5k per 250 chips.
Apple: Nope.
Samsung: AGH, $2k per 250.
Apple: Nah.
Samsung: FINAL OFFER, $1.7k per 250.
Apple: *YAWN*
Samsung: Fine, super serious, last offer or I'm leaving: $1.6k per 250.
Apple: $1.5k per 275.
Samsung: Deal!
My point: Samsung could have saw the deals between Apple and TSCM and lowered their prices substantially to keep a partnership with Apple.
I am guessing that not only for the chips but because of the horrible performance issues they had with non Samsung Retina screens.
Or keep using Sammy and TSMC so they'll be forced to out-bid each other.
Right up until Apple's own fab is ready.
Then Apple can dump both Sammy and TSMC.
Ohh man thanks for the good laugh
Its amazing how delusional some of you are and still think like a little kid in the playground bragging to his friends his toys are better.
You have you whole fanboy theory completely backwards and Samsung upped the prices on apple in the first place and was the reason apple went to tsmc in the first place.
The ball is and has always been in Samsung court and now Samsung can price gauge and rape apple in cost per chip because Samsung now knows 100% that they are the only ones that can meet apples demand and will most definitely milk them dry.
Just so u know Samsung made 8billion pure profit last quarter and posted its highest selling quarter for phones shipped.
Ya apple sure got Samsung alright lmfao
Thanks man I needed a good laugh before bed.
Apple hates Samsung to death and is forced to still use them after trying to see what tsmc could do.I'm willing to bet my gs4 that there yields sucked ass and the a7 chip ran hot as hell and consumed more power then an i7 at full load and apple said wtf were we thinking and crawled back to Samsung just like they did for the retina Mac book pro screens after people started a class action lawsuit against apple for using pos junk lg screens in some laptops.
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Sorry, I only deal in fact. Not in fan boy dreamland. The fact is, Apple makes a big deal of leaving Samsung only to keep coming back. Whether it's for displays of chips. if Apple could replace Samsung, they would. Fact is, Apple needs Samsung more than Samsung needs Apple. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you can enjoy those magical Samsung components in a peaceful state of mind.
Intel is close but the ceo of intel said they will never ever produce chips for another companies soc or CPU and would gladly sell them an atom or i7 cpu
Don't be ignorant. The real issue is quality and quantity. Sure they could have up to 5 manufacturing companies working on their chips at the same time to meet quantity (boy would that be a mistake), but the heart of the matter is quality. Fact of the matter is, Samsung owns the chip business. There are other manufacturers out there, but Samsung does it the best, and has huge operates to meet massive demands. Apple would most likely prefer to use Samsung for their chips (and they should have for their displays too - with the Macbooks they had wayyy too many faulty issues with LG displays, and none at all with Samsung's - as they used both in the same model), but they're not going to do so if they have so much animosity between each other. If they got along, they would be all over Samsung. It's just business
i just go to say after months of rumors about apple leaving samsung and reading through two pages of this topic, i can tell you none of you guys actually know what's happening. ti's all conjecture. this could've been all a made up dramedy by blogs and you guys are eating it up.
If any fanboy took that stance then they are an idiot. Samsung produce the best screens, RAM & fastest SSD's for Apple products.
Also, I'd venture ot say that in conglomerates like samsung, every business is run by itself. The chip business CEO probably doesn't really care about mobile competition from the mobile department and vice versa. Everybody is looking out for their own profits. I highly doubt the CEO of samsung cares as well as he just wnats his company to make profits. So all this talk about who needs whom more? That's literally manufactured drama.