Sihai network

Before Apple chose to develop its own chip, the partner lost a lot

Original title: Apple's choice of self-developed chips puts the manufacturer in a dilemma

4hw.com.cn comprehensive news: in recent years, Apple has gone further and further on the road of independent research and development of chips. From the beginning of CPU development to GPU, now even the network baseband and and power management chips have to do it by themselves. Among them, the most seriously injured is Apple's former partners, such as dialog, a power management chip supplier. Recently, the company released its first quarter financial report, and the CEO was almost in tears.

In dialog semiconductor's Q1 performance chart, revenue increased 23% year on year to reach $244 million, but profits fell 25%, leaving only $17.4 million. The reason, of course, is the impact of Apple orders. It is reported that Apple's orders account for 70% of dialog's revenue. Faced with this situation, CEO Jalal bagherli insisted that everything is still positive.

Last November, Nikkei News reported that Apple was developing its own power management chip. Later, dialog responded that Apple's behavior might put the power management chip contract between the two at risk. After that, the company's share price also fell rapidly by 19%. Bagherli said at the time that he did not have any definite information about Apple's plans, but also admitted that apple now has the ability to design its own power management chip, and is likely to do so in the next few years.

In fact, in March this year, dialog announced that it had won a chip contract from apple to 2020, and foreign media also reported that the business of dialog and apple is' growing continuously '. Bagherli said the chips in the contract will be used on many chips, but did not specify which devices. So the outside world has speculated that this order is actually for other products, and the power management chip of iPhone has been handled by apple.

Robin brass, an analyst, is more pessimistic. He thinks that dialog 100% does not know what apple is going to do now. Apple will not make a follow-up big order with dialog until the end of this year. Maybe Apple will come back and give them a "slap in the head" in November. Because it's too simple for apple to involve the power chip, because dialog was not responsible for the production before, and TSMC was responsible for the production work. The design process only required a team of 50 to 60 people.