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Yes, you are right. Thank you. It was from tsmc 20nm. For Apple, the decision point will be more about who can provide efficient capacity of leading edge technologies he needs, than cost. For early technology adopters (not pioneer), the cost weighting starts to increase.
Apple really changed the semiconductor industry. Systems companies making their own chips is a big deal. How many companies followed Apple? Systems companies have much bigger margins than fabless companies so they can spend more on chip development and manufacturing. Since software is a big part of systems, developing your own silicon in concert with your software provides a big competitive advantage. I really thought fabless companies would be a dying breed and maybe they are, we shall see.
If you look at EDA tools you will see that systems companies making their own chips dominates revenue. Surprisingly it is the same with TSMC thanks to Apple which is 25% of revenue. Fabless systems companies buy more EDA per chip design in my experience. This includes companies like Google Cloud, Amazon, FB, etc.. who use silicon internally versus selling systems.
Exciting times in the semiconductor industry, absolutely.
