As the world's highest market value technology company, the value created by Apple is obvious to all, Apple not only created wealth itself, but also led a group of supply chain partners to create wealth together, TSMC is the representative of the "fruit chain".
Although TSMC controls the world's most advanced chip production process, it is undeniable that Apple still affects TSMC's revenue, according to TSMC's previously released financial reports, in 2021 revenue of about 353.5 billion yuan, Apple contributed more than 90 billion yuan.
This means that in 2021, Apple will contribute more than a quarter of TSMC's revenue, so Apple's impact on TSMC's revenue is very large, if there is no Apple, TSMC's technology upgrade will not be so fast.
According to the latest news, Apple is expected to contribute more than NT$500 billion to TSMC this year, about 111.8 billion yuan, an increase of 20% compared with 2021, which shows that TSMC is going to make a big profit again.
Apple can contribute so much revenue to TSMC, mainly because of the huge demand for A16 chips in the 4nm process.
According to the news of the supply chain, Apple's self-developed new generation A16 application processor has completed the design finalization, will use TSMC 4nmN4P process, and has now begun a small amount of film, and will enter mass production in the second half of the year at TSMC Fab 18 Factory.
It is reported that Apple has contracted TSMC 120,000-150,000 pieces of 4nm production capacity for the production of A16 chips, if the utilization rate is 100%, a 12-inch wafer can probably produce 880 A16 chips, but 100% utilization is impossible.
Because in the chip production process, we also look at the corners that cannot be used, coupled with the yield rate of TSMC's advanced technology at about 80%, we temporarily estimate that a wafer can cut out 600 A16 chips.
If you estimate according to this data, it is equivalent to Apple has prepared 72 million -90 million A16 chips, which shows that Apple is full of confidence in the next generation of new machines iPhone 14 series.
However, in the iPhone 14 series of products, only the two models of the iPhone 14 Pro will use the A16 chip, and the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Max will use the A15 chip of the 5-core GPU version.
The chip is currently installed in the iPhone 13 Pro series, one more GPU core than the standard version of the A15, and theoretically has a 20% increase in graphics performance.
Next, the chip will be used in the iPhone 14 standard version of the model, which is also Apple's upgrade to the performance of the new machine, but it is not difficult to see from these adjustments that Apple is making a more obvious distinction between the standard version and the Pro version of the configuration, and the difference will be even greater in the future.
In addition to the greater difference in the processor, the camera gap of the iPhone 14 series will also be widened, because there are many sources confirming that the iPhone 14 Pro model will be equipped with a 48-megapixel wide-angle lens, while the standard version can only continue to use a 12-megapixel lens.
Then there is the screen, the iPhone 13 series is only different in refresh rate and size, but the iPhone 14 series will also change in the appearance design, and the render of the exposure shows that the iPhone 14 Pro model will use a "double digging hole" screen scheme.
From the appearance of the form, the screen of the iPhone 14 Pro is like an exclamation point design, which will continue to retain Face ID, while the standard version of the iPhone 14 will continue to use the bangs screen design, and the resolution is still 60Hz.
Fortunately, Apple will cancel the mini version of the model this time, and replace it with a 6.7-inch version of the iPhone 14 Max, the configuration is consistent with the iPhone 14, but the screen has become larger, which can better meet the needs of large-screen users.
In general, the new machines launched by Apple in the past generations have been able to achieve best sales, and the global sales volume has exceeded 100 million units, which has also greatly created a huge revenue profit for the "fruit chain" enterprises.
However, whether it is TSMC or Chinese mainland suppliers, over-dependence on Apple is not a good thing, such as OFILM was kicked out of the "fruit chain", resulting in a huge loss of 2.6 billion yuan in 2021.
For those companies that rely heavily on Apple to make money, they still have to find new breakthroughs as soon as possible to make business operations more diversified, only in this way can they go longer. What do you think about this, welcome to comment, like, share.