Comment by maxglute
Comment by maxglute 2 days ago
At what cost meme, but literally, what's the cost of a chip made in TSMC US vs TSMC TW.
Comment by maxglute 2 days ago
At what cost meme, but literally, what's the cost of a chip made in TSMC US vs TSMC TW.
It's hard to not cost more than employees who think it's literally a patriotic duty to sacrifice yourself for a profitable company. American execs Dream of this kind of non-monetary influence on the work force
Presumably competitive otherwise Apple wouldn't be buying them?
IIRC morris chang indicated US operated fabs would cost ~50% higher, which is not cost competitive, well not something buyers would sign for without something happening behind the scenes (i.e. US gov pushes Nvidia and Apple to use Intel foundries). If A16 is $100 from TSMC TW, it's $150 from TMSC US, presumably $50 to BOM is something Apple can afford, but most others might not. List of companies who are willing to source at 50% limited (unless incentives).
>shipping, importing fees
Don't these chips still need to be sent to China for assembly by Foxconn? If anything this will increase costs even more and seems like import fees could potentially be even higher due to the current US-China trade war. Unless there is a plan to assemble everything in the US/Mexico as well. But then the costs would be way higher to assemble outside of China: certainly in US but probably also in Mexico, and I don't think they have any factories there.
Nah
$100/$150 would be the "shelf price" of the Apple chips if they were in a box for sale like an Intel/AMD one
I believe you that the cost of the delivered (roll of) plastic chips is 50% bigger in the US. Probably less but it might be (also need to include the logistic cost to send it back to assembly on iPhone, etc)
Apple (pre-)pays for stuff and probably doesn't have any orders where Qty is under 7 digits with these big vendors.
It's ok their profit margin will go from 50% to 47%, they already have so much money that they don't even know what to do with it anymore