Having spent the best part of 2015 battling over who would win orders from Apple, TSMC and Samsung have both started volume production of the new A9 chips for the upcoming iPhone 6s, according to a new report.
Things haven’t been easy up until this point. TSMC has been involved with a lawsuit regarding the possible leaking of trade secrets to Samsung, while even Foxconn’s CEO Terry Gou got involved with the A9 squabble to lobby on behalf of TSMC, due to his concerns about Samsung’s status as an Apple manufacturer.
Apple apparently threw a last minute spanner in the works by requesting modifications to the mask patterns involved with the A9 chips production, prompting both TSMC and Samsung to rework their wafers before production could begin. Fortunately this is unlikely to have any impact on the iPhone’s launch schedule, which is likely to remain mid-September as usual.
A previous report suggests that Samsung will manufacture 70 percent of the A9 chips, while TSMC will manufacture the remaining 30 percent. Today’s report adds that TSMC has also scored the contract to build Apple’s iPhone fingerprint sensors and audio chips for the eagerly-anticipated 6s and 6s Plus.
A record-breaking 80 million units of thew new iPhone 6s are scheduled to be shipped by year’s end.
Source: Digitimes
