Apple Cutting Samsung Out Of A7 Chip Production

Apple is cutting long-time A-series chip manufacturer Samsung out of the equation. The company will instead hand manufacturing of its A7 chipsets to TSMC, a secondary provider for Apple up until this time.

An executive at Samsung tells The Korean Times: “Apple is sharing confidential data for its next A7 system-on-chip (SoC) with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).”

The Samsung exec then adds: “TSMC has begun ordering its contractors to supply equipment to produce Apple’s next processors using a finer 20-nanometer level processing technology.”

The executives suggestion is backed up by a parts supplier who works closely with Samsung. They note:

“Apple is cutting the use of Samsung displays for its products. Now the deterioration of ties has expanded to chips. You should remember that the application business is one of Samsung’s new growth engines in which the firm is heavily investing.”

To offset the loss of Apple-based business the team at Samsung is planning to manufacturer its own chipsets for its Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets.

Apple and Samsung working together has been a large conflict of interest for both companies. Samsung recently lost $1.1 billion in a patent dispute, which was partially overturned.

Apple, in the meantime, continues to accuse Samsung of directly stealing its Galaxy designs from the company’s iPhone and iPad line.

Here’s a great video that explain how the entire Apple V. Samsung lawsuit got started:

Samsung itself ditches the manufacturing of smartphone and tablet displays for Apple devices. Samsung said it needed to quit manufacturing the displays because Apple’s requirements and pricing demands became less profitable for the tech firm. Shortly after the display announcement, Samsung began demanded a 20 percent higher fee for the manufacturer of Apple-based chipsets.

A recent report suggests that Apple production partners have cut down their production numbers by 19 percent year over year, suggesting that interest in iPhone and iPad products have begun to wane.