Recent Motley article on Apple's A9 had this in it. would be nice to see A10 with Poet inside. Love this line too- > hard to deny that Apple brings a lot of volume at leading-edge technology
However, I don't think either Taiwan Semiconductor or Samsung -- the two companies said to be supplying Apple's A9 chips this coming fall -- face this sort of trade-off. If I'm correct about that, then it's hard to see either company "losing" in supplying Apple's A9 chip.
A diverse customer base is key to foundry success, but Apple business is good
Generally speaking, customer diversification is good, and I'm sure neither TSMC nor Samsung wants to be critically dependent on Apple's orders to keep their respective chip manufacturing businesses viable.
However, it's hard to deny that Apple brings a lot of volume, and -- perhaps more importantly -- a lot of volume at leading-edge technology. As Intel likes to point out at its investor conferences, semiconductor manufacturers that don't have leading-edge volume eventually lose the scale required to continue investing in leading-edge technologies and factories.
