“The chasm between Samsung Electronics and Apple is expected to widen further as the U.S. electronics giant has excluded its Korean rival from a project to develop A7 application processors, due to be released in the first half of next year,” Kim Yoo-chul reports for The Korea Times.
“‘Apple is sharing confidential data for its next A7 system-on-chip (SoC) with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). TSMC has begun ordering its contractors to supply equipment to produce Apple’s next processors using a finer 20-nanometer level processing technology,’ said an executive at one of Samsung’s local partners in Korea by telephone, Wednesday,” Kim reports. “Amid sluggish demand for conventional chips hit by poor sales of personal computers, Apple’s orders were a big help in lifting Samsung’s semiconductor business.”
Kim reports, “‘Apple is cutting the use of Samsung displays for its products. Now the deterioration of ties has expanded to chips. You should remember that the application business is one of Samsung’s new growth engines in which the firm is heavily investing,’ said an official of another top-tier parts supplier to the Korean company… ‘If Samsung fails to win Apple orders for A7 chips, then some of Samsung’s system chip-manufacturing lines will be stopped. That’s a scenario Samsung really doesn’t want to see.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Too bad, convicted serial patent infringer, finally you reap what you’ve sown, soulless slavish copier.
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