While the battle between Samsung and Apple continues to be fought both in the market place and the courts, Samsung remains a very important part of Apple’s supply chain. While some analysts expected the new A7 chip in this year’s iPhone 5s to be made by any company other than Samsung, it turns out the Korean firm is still hanging in there as the Cupertino firm’s chips supplier.
According to an inspection by Chipworks, the new A7 chip found inside the iPhone 5S is made by Samsung, just like last year’s A6 processor. It’s a bit of a surprise, as there were signs throughout the year that Apple was going to try to move away from relying on Samsung to get chips for its iOS hardware — most notably, Apple signed a deal with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) earlier this year.
While TSMC had been reportedly set to begin fabricating chips for Apple in 2014, Apple blogger John Gruber speculated that Apple’s A7 was already being produced by TSMC in the wake of report of cuts in Apple production at Samsung’s Austin fabrication facility.
So, you may be asking right now, does Samsung also make the M7 “motion coprocessor” that’s new in the iPhone 5s this year? Nope. Chipworks indicates that it’s built by NXP Semiconductors, a chip fab company located in the Netherlands.
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