TSMC to reap $17 billion in revenue from Apple alone in 2022
As many of you know, TSMC is the largest independent foundry in the world, and the firm's largest customer is-no surprise-Apple. Today, DigiTimes reports that TSMC will ship over $17.07 billion worth of chips to Apple in 2022. That is a gain of 23% over 2021 when TSMC delivered $13.84 billion worth of chips to Apple.
Shipments to Apple for its new devices are supposed to start during the first half of June. One of the chips being delivered could be the A16 Bionic which will be used with some of the upcoming iPhone 14 series, more specifically the Pro models.
You might recall that reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said last month that only the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max could be powered by the new 4nm A16 Bionic chipset; the other non-Pro variants could end up sticking with the A15 Bionic used with the iPhone 13 series and the iPhone SE 3.
Apple is TSMC's largest customer
TSMC recently announced that it will start shipping 3nm chips to consumers next year with 2nm chips coming in 2026. In theory, the lower this process node, the higher the number of transistors that fit inside a chip making them more powerful and/or energy-efficient.
Last year, Apple started shipping devices powered with its own M-series chipsets. The M1 sports 16 billion transistors (as opposed to 15 billion carried by the A15 Bionic) and is used to power the iPad Pro and the iPad Air. The M1 Pro is equipped with 33.7 billion transistors and there are 57 billion transistors found in the M1 Max.
The dual die M1 Ultra has the largest number of transistors found in a commercially available chipset at 114 billion. That chip is the combination of two M1 Max chips.
Foundries like TSMC don't design chips. They take designs produced by other companies like Apple and build the chips. Just the other day, TSMC founder Morris Chang said that the U.S. has the best chip designers in the world. Besides Apple, other prominent tech firms that are TSMC customers include Qualcomm, Intel, Nvidia, and AMD.
For the first quarter of 2022, TSMC reported $491.08 billion in revenue with $202.73 billion in net income. Profit margin was 41.3% and diluted earnings per share came to $7.82.
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