Accordng to SemiAccurate.com, a technology news outlet, Apple has made an investment in a chip fabrication plant.
In an interesting choice of words, the article preview said that the investment wasn’t “trivial.”
Unfortunately, SemiAccurate.com’s article is hidden behind a $1000-per-year subscription paywall, but AppleInsider noticed that United Microelectronics Corporation was tagged in the article.
UMC is a popular chipmaker that started in the 80’s and is based out of Taiwan (they’re listed in the NYSE though).
AppleInsider also noted that a few years ago, SemiAccurate also published another article with another seemingly far-fetched claim: that by early 2013, Apple would be moving from Intel to ARM chips in Macbooks.
However, the site did accurately predict that Apple would switch back to Nvidia graphics processors for its 2012 MacBook lineup. The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display launched last year with an Nvidia GeForce GT 650M, switching from the AMD Radeon HD 6750M GPU found in the late 2011 model.
For almost all Apple devices, the tech behemoth uses Samsung as the head chip manufacturer, but it looks like that’ll change. This is just another step in Apple’s quest to slowly become independent from Samsung as Galaxy devices like the S4 and Note 2 are becoming very popular.
A substantial investment in chip development could be good for Apple. By controlling the supply chain, they can limit leaks and increase their profit margins, which would ease the concerns of the investors on Wall Street. Not only that, but they get to move away from Samsung.
0 Comments