The Success of Apple's iPhone 6S will be Very Important to Samsung

[dgstorm]

When you are at the top of the food chain in the tech world (either in retail products or mobile hardware parts manufacturing), it's easy to end up in awkward situations. Such is the case with arch-rivals Apple and Samsung. According to the latest intel, Samsung has agreed to offer extra concessions to Apple in order to become the majority supplier of A9 chips for the iPhone 6S.

Supposedly, Samsung actually agreed to some price discounts that Apple demanded, by offering “almost-free backend services for the A9 chips.” The intel suggests Samsung did this so they could push TSMC (who reportedly refused Apple's price drop request) out of the picture so Sammy could build most of the A9 chips for Apple's next iPhone 6S.

This strange bedfellow relationship means that Samsung is in the position of desiring success for Apple's iPhone 6S while Apple will be be hoping Samsung can keep up with the demand in A9 chip production. It's an odd symbiotic relationship when you factor in Samsung Mobile's desire to beat the iPhone with their Galaxy S line.

The source of this intel is DigiTimes. They have a decent success rate, with solid knowledge of the supply chain, but it could still be just a rumor. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

 

[Ollie]

You just know Intel is kicking themselves in the butt after they initially refused Apple when Apple approached them to fabricate the SoCs for the iPhone. Intel said there wasn't any money to be made in it.

Now you have major SoC OEMs vying for that very same position.

IBM, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries announced 7NM earlier this year. TSMC is too far behind now and really have to ramp up their game to stay competitive.

 

[SuperFelix]

Maybe. After all, Samsung is more professional than Apple in some areas.

 

[thunderbolt_nick]

Didn't Sammy develop the screens too for the 6s? I wonder how much hands they got into the Force Touch panels or if that's all Apple.