The relationship between Samsung and Apple can hardly be called good, what with the lawsuits between both companies. However with Samsung manufacturing parts Apple needs for their products, such as their AX chips used in Apple’s iOS products, rumor has it that Apple is looking to reduce reliance on Samsung and if a recent report by RBC Capital analyst Doug Freedman is to be believed, it seems that Apple could be taking their business to Intel, who might be one of the few chip manufacturers in the world who have the resources and ability to manufacture the quantity that Apple demands.
According to the report, this is a new deal between Apple and Intel where Intel is said to help manufacture Apple’s mobile processors. In return, apart from monetary compensation, Apple is expected to incorporate Intel’s X86 processors in products other than their Mac computers, which some have taken to mean that we could be seeing Intel-built chips in future Apple products, although it is unclear if we are talking about Intel’s Atom chipset which Intel’s answer to ARM-based designs, or some future Intel chipset designed for tablet/ultrabooks that aren’t as energy intensive, like Intel’s next-gen Haswell CPU whose power-consumption level reportedly clocks in at 8W.
If you have been following the rumors, TSMC is reportedly one of the companies that Apple has turned to for the manufacturing of their AX chipsets, and it was only last month that Apple was reported to have dumped Samsung in favor of TSMC, although this seems to contradict rumors in August that TSMC turned down Apple’s offer to be their dedicated chip supplier as they had their hands full. Both Apple and Intel are keeping mum on the alleged negotiations for now, but the way things are going with Samsung right now, we wouldn’t be surprised if Apple was seriously considering alternatives for the future. We’ll take this with a grain of salt for now and suggest you do the same, but in the meantime what do you guys make of it? Possible?