According to Digitimes, Apple is continuing to diversify its suppliers and moving away from its dependance on Samsung:
Apple has increased its purchases of DRAM and NAND flash from Japan, according to industry sources, adding that Toshiba and Elpida Memory are being pinpointed as beneficiaries of the increased procurement.
Apple and Samsung have been in increasingly escalating legal battles over patent claims concerning Apple's iOS devices and Samsung's Galaxy line These lawsuits are said to be the reason for Apple's shifting of suppliers. Apple had previously been reported to have moved from Samsung to TSMC for production of the A6 processor in 2012. Meanwhile, Samsung has even threatened to sue Apple over the iPhone 5 once it is released.
Apple had quickly become Samsung's biggest customer with contracts for over $7.8 billion in parts in 2011. Apple seems to be doing its best to shift those contracts to Samsung's competitors over the next year.
Update: Reuters reports that Samsung has announced a $10 billion investment in a new flash memory production line, hoping to increase its share of the market and lower its own costs. Samsung will take approximately nine months to get the new line fully up and running.
Apple may have canceled the super scratch resistant anti-reflective display coating that it planned to use for the iPhone 17 Pro models, according to a source with reliable information that spoke to MacRumors.
Last spring, Weibo leaker Instant Digital suggested Apple was working on a new anti-reflective display layer that was more scratch resistant than the Ceramic Shield. We haven't heard...
Apple has completed Engineering Validation Testing (EVT) for at least one iPhone 17 model, according to a paywalled preview of an upcoming DigiTimes report.
iPhone 17 Air mockup based on rumored design
The EVT stage involves Apple testing iPhone 17 prototypes to ensure the hardware works as expected. There are still DVT (Design Validation Test) and PVT (Production Validation Test) stages to...
Apple will likely manufacture its 20th anniversary iPhone models in China, despite broader efforts to shift production to India, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
In 2027, Apple is planning a "major shake-up" for the iPhone lineup to mark two decades since the original model launched. Gurman's previous reporting indicates the company will introduce a foldable iPhone alongside a "bold"...
Wednesday April 30, 2025 3:59 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is preparing to launch a dramatically thinner iPhone this September, and if recent leaks are anything to go by, the so-called iPhone 17 Air could boast one of the most radical design shifts in recent years.
iPhone 17 Air dummy model alongside iPhone 16 Pro (credit: AppleTrack)
At just 5.5mm thick (excluding a slightly raised camera bump), the 6.6-inch iPhone 17 Air is expected to become ...
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Apple Watch, which launched on April 24, 2015. Yesterday, we recapped features rumored for the Apple Watch Series 11, but since 2015, the Apple Watch has also branched out into the Apple Watch Ultra and the Apple Watch SE, so we thought we'd take a look at what's next for those product lines, too.
2025 Apple Watch Ultra 3
Apple didn't update the...
Wednesday April 23, 2025 8:31 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices.
Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of April 2025:
Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
Tuesday April 29, 2025 3:36 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
All upcoming iPhone 17 models will come equipped with 12GB of RAM to support Apple Intelligence, according to the Weibo-based leaker Digital Chat Station.
The claim from the Chinese leaker, who has sources within Apple's supply chain, comes a few days after industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that the iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max will all be equipped with 12GB of RAM.
...
Tuesday April 29, 2025 1:30 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Despite being more than two years old, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 still dominate the premium wireless‑earbud space, thanks to a potent mix of top‑tier audio, class‑leading noise cancellation, and Apple's habit of delivering major new features through software updates. With AirPods Pro 3 widely expected to arrive in 2025, prospective buyers now face a familiar dilemma: snap up the proven...
Why doesn't Apple just make a factory, and make it? Not like they are poor or anything....
i live in asia and sell tshirts for a living, tshirts i mean about 30.000 pcs every month.
i can build my own factory and have 200 asian workers if i want to, but i prefer to design the tshirts in my company and give the designs to the factory that managed by other people so i don't have to deal with the workers.
it's a pain in the ass to deal with the workers and it will give me stress.
so i better let other company handle the production, give them a profit too and that means less profit for me but the stress life is non existence.
Or, more likely, that Apple screws itself by divorcing itself from one of the largest and most innovative suppliers.
I just hope Samsung becomes MORE innovative, bringing consumers NEW designs (like Motorola and Microsoft have lately done) and copying less from Apple. They’re not copying Apple’s designs because they have to, and not because that somehow means more “choice.” They’re doing it because it’s more cost-effective to copy than to innovate, so they innovate less and copy more. As a consumer, I surely don’t benefit from that. So I hope Apple succeeds in shifting Samsung to a more innovative approach, whether through buyer pressure, defending patents on things Apple actually did invent, or just making it not worth the bother to copy them any further.
Good thing Apple fans aren't waiting for the iPhone 5.
It will be interesting to measure the time between the next iPhone’s very first announcement and users having it in their hands, vs. the time between Microsoft’s very first Windows 8 announcement and users having that in their hands :D Windows 8 was announced before the next iPhone. Will it ship before the next iPhone, or after?
But none of those can hold a candle to Windows in the marketplace.
They can all hold a candle to Windows 8, since they’re out there now, whereas Windows 8 won’t ship for ages—like a year or longer). And Windows has been “in the marketplace” on tablets for years upon years, yet still lags far behind iOS after Apple re-invented the tablet.
