Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC), the world's biggest committed independent semiconductor factory, is seemingly on track to complete its 10-nanometer pilot assembly line before June ends.
Taiwanese media are speculating that the modern installations will manufacture the Apple-designed A10 processor believed to power the iPhone 7 and some other iOS products to be launched in 2016.
TSMC is set to establish 12 different factories situated in Hsinchu, and the company has begun its semiconductor intellectual property program, which targets signing up with Apple and other potential clients before the year ends. If all the facilities and pilot lines run according to plan and on schedule, the manufacturer could acquire 100 percent of all the Apple A10 orders.
This is in line with reports that Apple awarded TSMC 30 percent of all the A9 chip orders for the company's new iPhone and iPads for this year. Based on previous reports, Korean giant Samsung was supposed to deliver 100 percent of Apple's A9 orders until Foxconn CEO Terry Gou apparently used his influence over Apple, which led to the manufacturer supplying A9 chips.
Foxconn is one of Apple's key partners in the manufacture of Apple products. Gou recently confessed lobbying for TSMC, as Taiwanese manufacturers need to unite against the increasing threat of Samsung and its semiconductor business, which has the potential to render their employees jobless in the future.
According to Apple, the company made the decision to turn to TSMC after its partner GlobalFoundries showed exceptionally poor A9 processor chip yield rates of around 30 percent, which is far below the basic requirement of 50 percent.
One more factor in the decision came from concerns that Samsung's chipmaking industry could not sufficiently stock its 14-nanometer design because there has been an unexpected increase in the sales of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. Some reports also pointed out that TSMC has exceeded Apple's expectations in both performance and yield rate.
Samsung had a monopoly in supplying Apple's processor business, assembling all iPhone units until 2014, when TSMC started supplying chips for the iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6 using a 20-nanometer technique for the A8 processor, the main muscle of the Apple's top handsets.
In addition to beating Samsung in the manufacture of A10 processor chips, the Taiwanese company is also considering ways to compete better against the American titan Intel's own processor chips in the future.
