Apple recruits for the new office to build a self-developed wireless chip Chip stocks fell

After the news that Apple recruited for the new office to build a self-developed wireless chip, the chip stock fell.

By the close, soxx and Philadelphia semiconductor indices both fell more than 4%, Scarlett, Xilinx, Skyworks fell more than 8%, Wolfspeed fell more than 7%, Nvidia fell nearly 7%, Qualcomm fell nearly 6%, AMD fell more than 5%, NXP fell nearly 5%, Broadcom fell 3%, and Intel, which turned down in the short term, closed up more than 0.3%.

Earlier, the media said that Apple was recruiting engineers for its new office in southern California to develop wireless chips, which could eventually replace the products supplied by the two major chip manufacturers, Broadcom and Skyworks.

The media pointed out that Apple's new office recruits dozens of people in Irvine, California, near the University of California, Irvine. Irvine is also home to NXP's Wireless Chip Design Office. Apple may poach NXP to attract NXP engineers to jump ship.

It is not a surprise that the news of Apple's chip development has caused chip stocks to fall, because Apple's products, especially the main product, the iPhone, are an important source of income for chip manufacturers. According to statistics, about one-fifth of Broadcom's sales come from Apple, and nearly 60% of Skyworks' operating income comes from Apple's orders. Early last year, Broadcom and Apple reached a $15 billion agreement for the supply of wireless components, with a supply period ending in 2023.

In recent years, Apple has been committed to getting rid of its dependence on chip suppliers and taking the road of independent research and development.

At last year's Global Developers Conference, Apple announced that it would replace the Intel chips used in the Mac series of PCs with self-developed ARM architecture chips in the next two years, and released the first Mac computer equipped with self-developed chips in November. In October, Apple released a new MacBook Pro powered by the new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, claiming to be the first professional-grade chips designed specifically for macs.

In November this year, the media said that Apple plans to use TSMC's 4nm process to produce its self-developed iPhone 5G baseband chip, which is expected to achieve mass production in 2023. The news threatened Qualcomm, which almost monopolized Apple's baseband chip business.

In May this year, Guo Mingxi, a well-known Apple analyst and "prophecy emperor", said that Apple may launch the first self-developed baseband chip in 2023

In 2019, Apple spent $1 billion to acquire Intel's smartphone modem, the baseband chip business, laying the groundwork for replacing Qualcomm's baseband chips. At the time, Apple's senior vice president, Johny Srouji, commented that the acquisition would "help accelerate our development of future products and allow Apple to further differentiate in the future." ”

At last year's year-end internal meeting, Srouji also said that Apple has begun to develop its first 5G baseband chip last year and has been working to improve control over hardware devices, save expenses and reduce dependence on Qualcomm.