“Contrary to recent rumors, Samsung has won the contract to produce Apple’s next-generation A-series processor and will do so at the same Texas facility that churns out the 64-bit A7 at the heart of the iPhone 5s and iPad Air, according to a new report from South Korea,” Shane Cole reports for AppleInsider.
“An unnamed Samsung official told ZDNet Korea that a manufacturing agreement has already been signed and that engineers from both companies are working together to ramp up production,” Cole reports. “Shipments of the so-called ‘A8’ will reportedly begin this fall, around the same time that many expect Apple to unveil new models of its mobile devices.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Suggestion for a rhetorical question that Samsung’s legal team should slip into the next episode of the never ending series of Apple v. Samsung trials:
“If what we’re doing is so wrong, why does Apple keep doing business with us to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year?”
We’d also have loved to hear a version of that question posed to Apple CEO Tim Cook during the AAPL shareholders’ meeting. Oh, well, maybe next year.
Related articles:
Samsung cut out as TSMC starts stamping out Apple A8 chips for 4.7-inch iPhone 6, sources say – March 5, 2014
Samsung to stamp out 30-40% of Apple’s next-gen ‘A8′ chips, South Korean report claims – October 1, 2013
Samdung probably made them an “offer they couldn’t refuse”. My guess is that Apple is playing Samdung off against TMSC to get the better price. Also likely is that Samdung’s quality and quantity are proven and large.
I just hope Apple is squeezing them for everything they’ve got…
Can you imagine the ridicule that Google or Microsoft would receive here if they did something like this with Samsung? If Samsung were their evil enemy who had supposedly stolen or copied all their ideas! Good take MDN. Call a spade a spade.
SPAM! REMOVE PLEASE! THANK YOU!
For Apple its all about quality. They know that with Samsung the Apple brand is protected. This holds true on silicon, displays, drives, memory etc…
These 2 companies need one another to succeed in this space.
No they don’t. For the same reason I don’t actually need to buy a Samdmung TV. There are others that can do the same quality. There is nothing special about Samdung.
You are such an idiot. You are a failed Apple user if you do not recognize that serious Apple users always look for Samsung components in their Apple tech. MBA is a great example. Toshiba or Samsung = Samsung tops on all tests. Go back to your room and be quiet.
Samsung’s chip making and phone businesses are separate entities. Apple can hurt the latter more in court than by punishing the former. If Samsung offers Apple the best deal on chips, it would be foolish not to take it.
That’s the dumbest MDN take ever. Given a choice, don’t you think they would drop Samsung the first chance they get? None of us know how much Apple is paying for fabrication of these chips nor do we know if any other manufacturer can produce them in the quantities Apple needs reliable at a competitive price.
Samsung’s ability to make good chips has nothing to do with its decision to infringe Apple’s utility and design patents.
i’m confusted. yeah, i know. but, if shameshow can chip fab in tejas. y kant appal. sory, been regressing a bit.
Time for a day off on a tropical island solomé.
Aruba is wonderful.
solomé is nt a troiipol island
I’m infamous for my lousy syntax.
solóme, listen to me. I want you to open a window. Then drink some water and eat something. Then be still and do slow, deep breathing for a few minutes.
The problem is volume. TMSC most likely doesn’t have the volume yet and the cost may be higher as well.
Apple need 50M+ units a quarter. Not trivial.
Shareholders are not allowed to ask Tim Cook how their investments are being spent. He might get “visibly angry.”
Nice spin.
no “spin” required:
Hardly relevant, is it.
What has climate change got to do with the entity best placed to produce the maximum number of processor chips for the best price, at the best quality.
Please go stick your head in the crapper and pull the chain.
it was directly relevant to MDN’s take: “We’d also have loved to hear a version of that question posed to Apple CEO Tim Cook during the AAPL shareholders’ meeting. Oh, well, maybe next year.”
Also, fuck you.
Yes, spin is required, because you made a logical fallacy. Shareholders can surely ask “how their investments are being spent” at shareholder meetings. You’re implying Cook got mad they asked. He didn’t. He became upset when he disagreed with a shareholder proposal, which can be opposed. It’s a crazy free market idea called “corporate governance.”
see my response to someone almost as obtuse as you, Rorschach.
All you did was quote MDN’s take. That doesn’t get you anywhere. And it certainly doesn’t support your opening comment, that shareholders are not allowed to ask Tim Cook questions. MDN is hoping someone asks next year, not that Apple allows someone to ask next year.
It’s okay if you don’t understand the mistake you made. You can keep on living your life. It’ll be ok.
shut the fuck up.
Lawl. You lose.
and you still cannot read.
o rly?
or spell.
Hahaha. You’re too easy.
however, your spelling dramatically improved.
Time to work on your capitalization if you’re going to be a fascist about it.
Plus, you should become more familiar with seminal memes.
yeah, I’ll work on that as I always follow through on advice from those whom I admire.
are we about done here?
No.
Samsung makes the best chips in the world.
Ok, Apple designs their chips now. Apple buys more high end high quality chips than anyone I know of. So, Apple, take a few billion from this weeks profits and buy or build Apple’s very own solar powered green chip manufacturing facility. Build a few to spread out the risk in different places. It is time to get control of your manufacturing sources and stop feeding the enemy. Time to starve them!!!
Why hasn’t this happened!?!? What is Apple waiting for?? How much money do they have stockpiled?? WHAT ARE THEY WAITING FOR!?!?
Apple should grow their own chips at their server farms.
Are you that thick?
Server farms don’t GROW chips… they grow servers.
Maybe they should outsource thier chips to Lays.
In other news, Taiwan Semiconductor said today that it will produce to A8 chip, not Samsung.
Of course, both could be true. Perhaps TSMC can’t product the volumes Apple needs yet, so as they ramp up, Apple continues to use Samsung to meet volume demands.
You can guarantee that soon after you hear a claim that A id happening that another will surface saving no its B. So in reality out could be A bit could be B or perhaps a mixture of A and B. Don’t lets even think about C.
The expectation of journalists reporting factual information has become vaporous.
I agree with MDN, it’s a friggin shame that Apple continues to support a slavish copy-cat like Samsung year after year.
..and the saddest part is that Apple keeps buying more and more each year. Apple is BY FAR (measured in dollars) the biggest buyer of Samsung products and the amount is increasing NOT decreasing as it should.
It’s a disgrace, Steve would never have let it go this far, no way, no how..
TIMMY: it’s time for you to man up and find alternatives, the standard “we have no choice, it’s the best deal”-argument can only hold up so many years. You have a s*itload of money, build your own plant if you can’t fix the problem otherwise hmpf!
MDN Take, I think MDN you already have your answer from a prior MDN take from a few days ago (with a slight modification):
Tim Cook’s modified reply from recent stockholder’s meeting…
“No, I wouldn’t be willing to say that, because we do things for other reasons when making our iPhone. We do things because they are right and just and that is who we are. That’s who we are as a company. I don’t… when I think about having A-8 chips made, I don’t think about who’s making them. When I think about making our products accessible for the people that can’t see or to help a kid with autism, I don’t think about a bloody copier making inferior products, and by the same token, I don’t think about helping our capability from an chip making point of view. It’s not how I look at it. My simple point was if you did only look at it in that way from the Intel partnership and the buying of PA Semi or Intrinsity, the same decisions would have been made and so there are cases where you can see these two spheres connecting but I’m not going to say that that’s all I’m going to do by any means. I don’t look at it that way. Just to be very straightforward with you, if that’s a hard line for you, if you only want me to make things, make decisions to utilize non Samsung chips, then you should get out of the stock just to be plain and simple… Thank you. I think it’s so important to remember that the Apple brand stands for something and you can’t take each piece of it and say, “This has a Samsung stamped processor chip and this doesn’t, and you shouldn’t have given this $100 million to buy ‘X’ Chip company,” and all this kind of stuff. That’s not the way we look at it. It’s not who we are as people.”
Not a critique, should, in a sly way, put a smirk on your face… the way an off handed sexual inuendo joke might… But 1 star me anyway if you must for having no sense of humor, it won’t bother me.
Read more at http://macdailynews.com/2014/03/07/why-tim-cook-doesnt-care-about-the-bloody-roi/#BPhLjpv8J3sq5vsF.99
I think this was an attempt to be witty. I really do.
I don’t know about ‘witty’ but have you ever seen a movie that was so horrible, tasteless, tactless, poorly written, scripted and performed that in spite of all that, for some reason, you inexplicably actually enjoyed it?
I think I get what you’re saying, and yes — not a movie, though, but some of the diatribes that appear in this forum.
So bad, they’re almost good.
Well what can I say, I disagree with TC on this one 100%, sorry Timmy you are a great CEO but on this very specific issue you are very Very VERY wrong.
You don’t give tenths of billions to scumbags like Samsung (especially when you have one helluva lot of money to throw around) if there is even the most remote way to avoid is – and there is, find another partner, compromise with the price a bit (you can afford it) or build your own plant.
I especially hate TC’s argument because for many years Apple didn’t do crap with their money, they just held it in the bank account with an interest rate that was LOWER than the inflation rate, effectively losing money.
The answer to MDNs question is honoring a contract.