The Likely Winners in Apple vs. Samsung War – TSMC and GlobalFoundries

As the legal clashes between the two companies are getting tougher and come about significantly more often than it happened before, Apple and Samsung are apparently becoming bitter enemies that won’t collaborate on virtually anything.

For those that might not know, Samsung is the maker of most of components inside Apple’s iPad tablets and iPhone smartphones, but the Cupertino-based giant is not willing to be a good client for the Korean company anymore. As the costs of designing a mobile SoC are considerably high and it takes quite a bit of time for the company to move manufacturing from one FAB to a different FAB, Samsung is still making the processors inside Apple’s both bestselling devices, the iPad and iPhone. Leaving the SoC aside, Apple has already found new manufacturers and suppliers for mostly every other component inside its gadgets. LG Electronics, Sharp and Japan Display are now the primary suppliers of retina-class screens for iPhones despite the fact that Samsung is also an expert high-quality display maker.

Elpida and SK Hynix are now Apple’s DRAM memory suppliers although Samsung has the most advanced low-power DRAM products. In a final move to show that it means business, Apple went to Japanese giant Toshiba for NAND flash memory for the new iPhone 5 smartphone, Xbitlabs reports. The next step for Apple, and most important one we might add, is to move the manufacturing of the famous A-series mobile processors away from Samsung’s FABs. Right now, Samsung manufactures all A-series CPUs that power Apple’s iPhone, Apple iPod touch, Apple iPad and Apple TV set-top-box.

Ensuring enough volume from TSMC will be quite an endeavor for Apple, but we’re sure that the two companies could work it out. GlobalFoundries on the other hand has a very advanced 28nm manufacturing process available and it is just looking for customers while having considerable manufacturing capacity available. In our opinion, these two foundries will be the ones Apple will go for when it is ready to leave Samsung’s FABs.

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Image credits to Apple

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