Qualcomm has been Apple's chip supplier for many years, but the relationship between Qualcomm and Apple began to deteriorate after Apple sued Qualcomm for overbilling its chips last year and refused to pay about $ 1 billion in refinances.Reuters last October It has been disclosed that Apple has designed iPhones and iPads that do not use Qualcomm baseband chips and Nomura Securities (Nomura Instinet) said Apple will abandon Qualcomm in favor of other chip suppliers to reduce the cost of iPhone materials, the company analyst Romit Shah said that Apple would save more than $ 100 million in cash by switching to Intel chips in the next iPhone.
The iPhone 7 is Intel's first product to begin shipping baseband chips to Apple, which has long held the opinion that Qualcomm's version of iPhone 7 performs 30% better than Intel's version. In the case of weak signals, the Qualcomm version Better than the latter 75%. Overall, Intel may 5G network technology as Qualcomm, equipped with Qualcomm's iPhone's performance is superior to the use of Intel's chip iPhone.
However, Guo Ming-kun recently pointed out that Intel is expected to become the exclusive supplier of new iPhones this year due to its baseband chip performance has been able to meet Apple's technical requirements to support CDMA2000 and dual card dual standby features, Intel offer more competitive, and Apple Qualcomm is conducting patent litigation and other litigation, hoping to exert pressure on Qualcomm.
If Apple really adjusted for baseband suppliers this year, there will be a degree of reshuffling in Apple's supply chain.
Foundry, after Intel and Qualcomm shipped to Apple's mobile baseband chip by TSMC foundry, Intel replaced Qualcomm, the chip is expected to be moved back to Intel's own wafer fab production.Currently Intel has begun planning to expand Its own wafer production capacity is expected to be 10nm in 2019, the company had threatened to go against TSMC.
As a result, TSMC and UMC and other original Qualcomm orders accounted for more than 10% of revenue of the wafer fab will be affected.To this more optimistic that TSMC, said not worried about transfer orders, the mode of operation is not dependent on Qualcomm, Apple is only Qualcomm orders Part of it, the impact is limited.
In terms of RF chips, RF components such as power amplifiers (PA) previously used by Qualcomm's baseband chip platforms are mainly based on products from Avago, which is likely to switch from Avago to Qorvo after its launch. Correspondingly, For Avago, Qorvo Foundry's steady Mao, as well as for OEM foundry KYEC, etc. will have a corresponding impact.Jing Yuan Yuan from Apple introduced iPhone 7, Intel baseband chip is the main back-end test plant, if Intel took all iPhone orders, KYEC orders will also surge, becoming Intel and Qualcomm for Apple orders for the benefit of vendors.
Romit Shah, an analyst with Nomura Instinet, said that Apple will also switch some Broadcom products to Qorvo and STMicro products, after executives at Qorvo said later this year that Apple is expected to get the most design adoption ever, More than the previous part of the wireless components market research firm Drexel Hamilton pointed out that mid / high-band PAD and Phase 6 were adopted by the design, while the mid / high-band PAD has been sent to the new smart phone manufacturers, but not yet Qorvo clear that the new orders received by Apple is the product affected by this news, Qorvo shares rose 10% on the day.
According to Bloomberg supply chain data, TSMC has nearly 15% of its revenue from Broadcom and Qualcomm, UMC 17% of revenue from the two companies, steady Mao nearly 15% of revenue from Qorvo .This change is implemented, Apple The supply chain will also have some reshuffle.
It is noteworthy that Apple came out this year, the new iPhone may be completely abandoned Qualcomm platform, Broadcom at this time 'moderate' to increase the purchase price, Apple and Broadcom stand in the same front, intended to exert pressure on Qualcomm's board of directors and shareholders, to promote Shareholders agreed to a public offer.Therefore, set micro-analysis, Apple abandon Qualcomm does not exclude Apple's pressure on Qualcomm's competitive strategy, the future is really implemented is not yet known.