The Apple Execution Dazzle Thread

Samsung had the foresight to not walk into a copyright claim. They may be sleazy, they're not idiots.

Do you think Google was wrong to point out to Samsung that they were copying?

This whole thing will play out in courts for years. Federal court overrule lower courts routinely.

 

The damage awards in that decision were broken down by model. According to that jury, the Epic 4G phone was evidently similar enough to iphone to warrant a $130M damages award alone:



Makes perfect sense ...?

 

And the Galaxy S I linked image of apparently wasn't, only it's 4G model was, even though Apple only has one iPad with 4G/LTE support, and 0 iPhones with it, if I'm not mistaken
(The Galaxy S & Galaxy S 4G aren't even same looking - the 4G model that DOES infringe something doesn't have the big "home button" that the basic Galaxy S has for example)

 

SemiAccurate claims Apple "Apple just bought into a fab, and not in a trivial way either": http://semiaccurate.com/2013/07/12/apple-has-their-own-fab/

The rest is behind a paywall, but there aren't very many possibilities.

A) A big stake in TSMC, which would make sense in light of recent news about Apple moving its production there, though that would cost most of Apple's cash;
B) GlobalFoundries, which is much more affordable;
C) Some kind of partnership with IBM? I'm not sure IBM's technology is the sort of thing Apple is looking for. As I understand, Big Blue aims for maximum performance/power at the expense of yields, and can't handle very high volumes;
D) Samsung, which, well, no.

Option A) would present some serious anti-competitive concerns. Option C) seems implausible. Option B) would be interesting. The sort of capital expenditures Apple can handle might allow GloFo to catch up with Intel. I'm not sure what this would mean for AMD, though, as Apple might like to retain exclusive use of its newly acquired fabs.

 

He's changed the article from earlier, which basically ruled out GF and Intel leaving only TSMC.

 

It looks the same to me, or are you referring to something behind the paywall?

 

It's changed from earlier today, it had commentary that basically ruled out Intel and GF if I recall correctly. Just the basic article, no idea about behind the paywall.

 

I see, thanks. I guess Charlie thought this gave away too much in the free version of the article.

 

Yes tbh I thought he did when I read it at first. Checking the forum post for the article is seems that others have noticed it was pulled at some point as well.

 

What about UMC? It's much smaller but still working with very modern process nodes.. it's now validating 14nm finFET.

 

I forgot about them (/confused them with Chartered). But you're not the only one thinking this: http://www.macrumors.com/2013/07/12...-a-chip-fab-looking-to-produce-its-own-chips/

UMC wouldn't raise any anti-trust issues, and while it most likely couldn't handle all of Apple's volume right away, a gradual transition should be possible. Plus, it's cheap. This does seem to make some sense. But I'm not sure UMC's technology really is competitive with TSMC/GloFo's.

Then again, with Apple's bank account behind them, they could catch up.

 

An OS, almost all of the hardware, the software, and now a fab... Apple has almost achieved 100% vertical integration. What's next, Foxconn? Or perhaps an LCD manufacturer?

Anand Shimpi speculated that Apple would have to commit to being a full blown fab company, or regress to their previous state. Looks like he was right.

It's definitely a gamble, thanks to Intel's refocus on Atom. They're going up against the god of all semiconductor firms. This will be an interesting battle.

With the kind of volume that Apple has, it probably wouldn't take long for them to break even on their fab venture. I'd better stock up on beer and popcorn.

 

No it wont, "consumers" don't care about what we care about. ARM doesn't have a market name or presence in the mobile space and neither does intel. Only Samsung, Apple, HTC, etc. The battle here is for Intel to be relevent in a market where they cant dictate because they aren't the key component.

Its also why you wont see the big guys go with Atom, because then they are dictated by intels schedule and effectively just become like PC OEM's.

 

Actually we dont really have any idea of what is behind it... second article mention something completely right, going to product their own processors based on ARM will take them many many years and many money.
Its a complete different things, to do the things from A to Z, from the simulator to the fab process and then to mass production.. Specially if you are dependant of a little fab..

Personally im a bit worry for Apple about this move.

 

What in the world do consumers have anything to do with what I stated?

They already made the custom ARM move years ago, with the fruit of it fully ripened last year. If they're not going to create disruptive products, then they need to do everything they can to maximize their control over quality.

 

Consumers determine who wins the battle by what they purchase.

 

The quality of the SoC inside the phone is going to make a huge difference to your average consumer. Higher power efficiency leads to thinner designs, lighter with better battery life. That's something anybody would enjoy.

If Intel's got the better SoCs, those SoCs are inevitably make design wins and capture a good portion of the market. Just because consumers aren't directly buying Intel branded devices does not mean that SoC performance and cost are removed from the equation.

 

Indeed, i believe that intel will appeal to the high end phone buyers once they get on their 14nm process.

 

http://english.hankyung.com/news/apps/news.view?c1=&newscate=1&nkey=201307150718011