Recently, the famous analyst Guo Mingji broke the news that Apple's new generation of iPhone 14 non-pro series will use last year's A15 chip. This will be another major adjustment to Apple's product line. Bidding farewell to the past by reducing the core or reducing the frequency of the same generation of chips into different grades to open up the gap between different products, this time it is directly used two generations of chips. So why should Apple do it?
Here's why.
First, the chip shortage. Under a series of tumultuous operations by the United States for the global semiconductor industry, the supply relationship and supply chain of the global semiconductor industry have suffered major interference, and due to the epidemic and the increase in raw material prices and the lack of foundry capacity, the lack of cores in recent years has been menacing. Even Apple was not spared, and was forced to cut the production of the iPhone 13 series by 20 million units, and the iPad was also out of stock on a large scale around the world. In the case that the global lack of cores cannot be alleviated in the short term, Apple has to use TSMC's limited 4nm production capacity on its own A16 chip. And the use of 5nm technology with higher production capacity and lower technical difficulty to produce A15 chips is used to alleviate the impact of the lack of cores.
Second, Apple wants to make a bigger distinction between products at different prices.
In the past, the iPhone ordinary series and the pro series used the same generation of chips, but the Pro series used a full blood version, while the ordinary use of the residual blood version. But even so, it still can't pull away enough poor performance distance, so Apple wants to open up the gap between different price segments by using two generations of chips. Personally, I think it would be more reasonable to do so.
Third, the cost reasons.
As we all know, chips not only have raw material costs, production costs, but also research and development costs. Why is Apple keen to use the latest chips on the iPad? The aim is to allow the iPad and the iPhone to share the cost of chip development. Last year's iPad mini6 and this year's iPad air5 share the production and development costs of the A15 chip and the production and development cost of the M1 chip, respectively. Therefore, the A15 chip is cheaper to produce than the A16 chip, and after the iPhone 13 series and the iPad mini6 series are used, the research and development cost of this chip has been shared very low. So with this chip, you can get greater profits. Therefore, Apple dared to order 50 million A15 chips and 50 million A16 chips of TSMC production capacity.
But Apple will definitely have other ways to distinguish between the iPhone 13 series using the same chip and the iPhone 14 non-Pro series. Otherwise everyone will buy the iPhone 13.