Apple may not wish to extend its mobile processor contract production with Samsung next year, due to the increased animosity between the two. Apple may require 200 million processors next year and among major chip makers, only TSMC has the capacity can provide that. Previously Morris Chang, TSMC’s CEO, indicated that his company will dedicate two entire manufacturing plants towards a specific major customer.
This would be a move that startle TSMC’s other significant customers, namely, Qualcomm and Nvidia.
It is rumored that TSMC would start supplying the majority if not all quad-chip chips needed for future iOS devices, which will be built using the 20nm process. Producing such an advanced component at massive scale may put TSMC’s other customers on the backburner. This situation may escalate to the rest of the mobile industry, making it harder for device manufacturers to get Nvidia’s Tegra and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips.
