Apple suppliers prepping to stockpile A11 chips for upcoming iPhones

Quarterly chip demand for iPhone is predicted to surpass 50 million units in the second half of this year as Apple begins to stockpile next-generation processors and other chips for 2017 iPhones, trade publication DigiTimes said Wednesday. Chip orders should hit a total of between 220 million and 230 million units between the end of the second quarter and the beginning of the third. This implies strong projected demand for the OLED-based iPhone 8 and the iterative LCD-based iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus updates.

According to the report, the following suppliers will build various chips for 2017 iPhones:

  • ADI
  • Broadcom
  • Cirrus Logic
  • Cypress
  • NXP
  • Qualcomm
  • STMicroelectronics
  • Texas Instruments

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC), which churns out iPhone 7’s A10 Fusion processors, should exclusively fabricate Apple’s custom-designed A11 processor for the upcoming iPhone series.

According to Statista’s handy chart seen above, the following companies depend on Apple for up to three-quarters of their total sales:

  • Dialog Semiconductor (power management chips)
  • Cirrus Logic (audio chips)
  • Foxconn (manufacturing)
  • Japan Display (display panels)
  • Glu Mobile (mobile games)
  • Imagination Technologies (GPU designs)

TSMC recently promised to ramp up production of ten-nanometer chips in the second half of 2017. The semiconductor foundry expects the node to account for about ten percent of its total wafer sales during the six-month period.

Source: DigiTimes