Samsung Reportedly to Produce iPhone Chips Next Year: Report

Samsung has reportedly secured a deal to resume making A-series processors for Apple in 2018, having been largely cut out of production for the past few years.

According to a new story from The Korea Herald, “Samsung recently purchased extreme ultra violet lithography machines, the most advanced chip manufacturing equipment, to produce seven-nanometer mobile processors solely for iPhone.”

Sources claimed that one of Samsung’s three co-CEOs, Kwon Oh-hyun, was central to winning the deal, and visited Apple’s headquarters in June. “The CEO could persuade Apple’s top brass taking advantage of their close ties on OLED,” one source said.

Samsung is thought to be the lone OLED supplier for this year’s iPhone 8, since it controls 95 percent of the world’s OLED market — companies like LG and Foxconn’s Sharp are only now beginning to ramp up their production capacity.

Samsung was one of Apple’s primary chip producers until 2013, when TSMC became the sole provider of chips for iPhones. Due to the company’s more energy-efficient seven nanometer technology, TSMC succeeded in winning all of Apple’s business.

Now, Samsung is said to be preparing tests for its own chip processing machines, and next plans to “seek final approval from Apple for the chip production” for what will presumably be called the A12 chip.

Additionally, as the sole OLED supplier for the 2017 iPhone, Samsung Display’s deal with Apple has placed the manufacturer with providing between 70 and 92 million OLED displays for the upcoming iPhone 8.