According to recent developments, it has been revealed that even with an ongoing war in patent litigations, Samsung Electronics and Apple are expected to continue their current partnership wherein Samsung supplies the chips for Apple’s mobile devices. Sources from the industry have stated that Apple will continue to buy chips from Samsung and use the technology in its upcoming smartphone, which could be named the iPhone 5.
An executive of one of Apple’s parts suppliers from Korea stated that Apple and Samsung have recently been in talks over the shipments of the next generation Apple quad-core processor, which is being called the A6, which will power the upcoming iPhone. The source stated that it looks as if Apple has finally come to the decision that Samsung will remain an important partner for its business. He also added that the output of the A6 chips is constantly being increased by Samsung in the company’s manufacturing plant based in Austin.
The Austin, Texas based Samsung plant which was opened four years ago is one of the main facilities of the company for the production of NAND flash components and is also utilized for producing IC circuits and business related to foundry. It was earlier being speculated that Apple would shift its chip sourcing channel to Samsung’s Taiwan based rival TMSC.
The executive also said that the A6 mobile CPUs will use the 28nm processing technology from Samsung. Both Apple and Samsung did not comment in the information. The talks which are still going on between the two companies were revealed after Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung told the media that the legal disputes concerning Apple are being separately handled by the company.
The Samsung COO Lee Jae-Yong is expected to meet Apple CEO Tim Cook over the several issues which are pending between the companies, which reaffirms the assumptions that Apple still believes that Samsung is a critical parts supplier. Samsung has stated that its ability for manufacturing customized chips on a contract or foundry basis provides it with an upper hand over the rival TMSC. According to analysts from the industry, Apple is on way to becoming the largest overseas client for Samsung before the end of this year after it buys components worth more than $8 billion which include memory chips and LCDs.
