Report: Apple set to leave Samsung dry with termination of chipset manufacturing relationship
A lot of things have happened inside the courtrooms in the ongoing epic battles between Samsung and Apple, but there is just as much action outside the ominous halls of justice. Apple has long been rumored to be dwindling its dependency on Samsung for several components, including displays and batteries, and the biggest move of them all could be looming.
DigiTimes reports that Apple is ready to leave Samsung’s semiconductor manufacturing business hanging at the altar as the former is supposedly going to bypass the latter for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the biggest worldwide player in this space. Samsung is said to be getting as much as $13 billion next year out of its deals with Apple, and this move could put a huge dent in those figures.
It’s possible that Apple would deny this move has anything to do with their newly-developed rivalry with Samsung, but considering nothing has been confirmed then their reasoning is anyone’s guess. But being the drama lovers that we are not ashamed of being we have to immediately go with our first suspicion — Apple is simply trying to cripple Samsung wherever it can.
Whether or not this would actually hurt Samsung’s bottom line is an entirely different numbers game altogether, but keep in mind that Samsung is still the world’s leader in mobile phone shipments, and the company still has a billion other business bringing in loads of dough.
One has to question whether Apple actually has the gall to go through with such a move, though. Samsung’s losses would only be monetary, and if we can assume that many of its other partnerships and businesses don’t fall through then the beat will move on. But what if Apple is the one who could come out on the sour end of this move?
TSMC was said to be responsible for a slight delay in the mass production of the Snapdragon S4 chipset that almost affected the launch of several HTC devices earlier this year. While that anomaly isn’t commonplace you have to wonder whether or not a transition from Samsung to TSMC could potentially hurt Apple for future device launches. TSMC would have to scale its capacity to meet the huge demands of Apple while maintaining a balancing act for the likes of Qualcomm and NVIDIA.
It would be one of the biggest transitions we’ve ever seen in the embedded semiconductor space, and a lot of moving parts involved could make this a risky and tricky move for Apple to take. We have a feeling that the Cupertino company would be willing to take that risk, though, if their hate for Samsung is as strong as we think it is.
Either way, it will be an interesting day if Apple ever decides to go through with it and we’ll be front row and center to see it all taking place. Who do you think would be hurt the most by such an action?
[via DigiTimes]