What you need to know
- Apple has reportedly asked chip supplier TSMC to get 100 million A15 chips ready for iPhone 13.
- Apple is expecting bumper demand for this year's iPhone refresh.
Apple has reportedly ordered 100 million A15 chips for use in the upcoming iPhone 13 devices, a further sign that the company expects bumper sales when the new handsets go on sale this fall.
According to supply chain sources cited by CNBeta — via machine translation — chip supplier TSMC has been tasked with getting 100 million chips out the door.
According to upstream supply chain news, TSMC will gradually produce A15 processors for the new iPhone in August , and the total number of A15 processors that Apple has booked at TSMC this year exceeds 100 million, which means that the first batch of new machines will be stocked. It will be more than 5% higher than the 95 million optimists estimated.
Apple had already been said to have high hopes for iPhone 13. While iPhone 12 sold well, iPhone 13 promises to be the best iPhone yet and will come at a time where retailers around the world are once again open for business. Apple Stores will also be operating without the same limitations that were in place when iPhone 12 arrived late last year, too.
The A15 bionic will reportedly be based on a 5nm manufacturing process and feature a 6-core CPU. While the A14 used in iPhone 12 was also based on a 5nm process, the move to a new N5P system is expected to offer improvements in performance and power efficiency — two things that Apple's chips have traditionally excelled at.
If all goes according to plan I expect Apple to announce new iPhones in September, with handsets going on sale shortly after. We still have new Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac hardware supposedly coming before the end of the year, too.
