The relationship between Samsung and Apple has gone from bad to worse. Now you probably know it already that Apple is also one of Samsung’s biggest customers on the semiconductor side. Apple gets its own iPhone and iPad processors manufactured by Samsung, with around 130 million processors estimated to have been shipped to Cupertino last year. This year, the number of processor shipments grew to more than 200 million. According to MarketWatch, Samsung has reportedly increased the price of its mobile processors manufacturing for Apple by as much as 20 percent.
Sources told the publication that Samsung has already informed Apple about the significant price increase. The Cupertino-based tech giant reportedly expressed disapproval at first, but eventually accepted the new price because it cannot find any other supplier. Sources added that the new pricing is now being fully implemented. Apple’s contract with Samsung is expected to end in 2014. Apple and Samsung has yet to confirm the report.
Publisher’s note: If you’re not familiar with the matter, Apple designs its own processors and outsources the manufacturing to Samsung Semiconductors, which is what is called a “foundry” for Apple. This is very common as Qualcomm has its chips manufactured partially by TSMC. If this information is true, Apple may be quite unhappy about this, but on the other hand, they may have a hard time finding another foundry that can churn out this kind of volume. TSMC has its hands full with Qualcomm, NVIDIA and other customers.