Apple is TSMC's largest customer, this relationship has been maintained for several years, as a large customer of TSMC, Apple can naturally use TSMC's latest technology, starting from the A12 chip, Apple has adopted TSMC 7nm process, becoming the industry's first 7nm chip.
Thanks to TSMC's excellent process level, the performance of Apple's mobile phones has also continued to improve in recent years, and the A15 chip equipped with the latest iPhone 13 is the ceiling of the industry, which is much better than the chips in the Android camp.
Of course, in addition to the strong TSMC foundry technology, but also related to the strength of Apple's design chip, to know that Apple has launched an M1 series of PC chips that can replace Intel processors, there are not many companies with this strength in the world.
However, it is a pity that the A15 chip equipped with the iPhone 13 did not use the latest 4nm (N4) process of TSMC, and the process of this node has been grabbed by MediaTek for the first time and used on the Tianji 9000 chip.
The A15 chip is still based on TSMC's 5nm process to build, it should be noted that the A15 chip uses the latest N5P version, not the N4 version used in the A14 chip, which means that there is still a certain upgrade.
The 4nm (N4) version of the MediaTek Tianji 9000 is an advanced optimized version of the N5P, but due to limited production, it cannot meet the supply of Apple's A15 chip, so Apple missed the first release of this version.
Now the good news is that Apple's A16 chip will be launched and exclusively 4nm (N4P) process, which is an upgraded version of the N4 version.
Foreign media reported that the A16 processor has completed the design finalization, and like the A15 chip, the A16 will also launch two versions, both 6 core processor architecture, using TSMC 4nm N4P process projection.
As an upgraded version of the 5nm process, the new 4nm process can achieve 11% performance improvement and 22% energy efficiency improvement, and with the blessing of TSMC's 4nm process, the Apple processor, which is already excellent enough, will surely become more powerful.
In this way, the iPhone 14 series released in 2022 will have a better performance, which also makes many netizens look forward to it.
However, it should be noted that in 2022, TSMC's 4nm process has seen a certain range of price increases, compared with about 10% of the previous year, even as the first largest customer of TSMC Apple, I am afraid it is difficult to escape the price increase, but the increase may not be so exaggerated.
Judging from the outside world, apple has now accepted the price increase requirements of TSMC, considering that the cost of A16 chips has increased, which inevitably makes many netizens feel worried, thinking that Apple will therefore increase the price of the iPhone 14 series.
You know, the iPhone 13 series released in September 2021 has become a product that Apple has not lowered its price much in history, especially the iPhone 13, after increasing the capacity to 128GB, the price is lower than the iPhone 12 and 300 yuan.
If you compare it with the 128GB version of the iPhone 12, which costs 6799 yuan, it means that the price of the iPhone 13 has been reduced by 800 yuan in disguise, and the decline is still very large.
The reduction in the price of the iPhone 13 series has also made this phone a very best-selling product on the market, which is well received by consumers, especially in the Chinese market, and has achieved unprecedented good results.
If the iPhone 14 series is going to raise the starting price, it will definitely disappoint many consumers! In this way, can the iPhone 14 series create a new business legend? Comment, like, share, and share your opinion.