Apple suggests it won't sell Apple silicon to other companies

AppleInsider

While refusing to rule it out, Apple CEO Tim Cook says that it is moving Mac to Apple silicon specifically to enable its own product plans, not anyone else's.

Apple Silicon

Pressed about the forthcoming Apple silicon during Apple's Q3 2020 earnings call, Cook declined to say that the company would never sell its technology to other firms. However, he came as close to outright saying no as Apple ever does on these legally-mandated calls.

"I don't want to make a forever comment," he replied to an analyst question, "but we're a product company, and we love making the whole thing."

Asked specifically whether Apple would consider monetizing the technology and becoming what the analyst called a "merchant silicon monger," Cook chose to elaborate on why the company has chosen to move away from Intel.

"If we can own the user experience in that way, [our goal is] delighting the user," he said. "And that's the reason that we're doing Apple Silicon, because we can envision some products that we couldn't achieve otherwise. And so that's how we look at it."

Cook also responded to a more general question about the perceived benefits of moving to Apple Silicon. "What we would end up with is a common architecture across all of our products," he said, "which gives us some interesting things that we can do."

"[It] sort of unleashes another round of innovation," he continued, "and so I don't want to say a lot about it, other than we're extremely excited about it."

verne arase

Good.

Let them make their own cake.

rob53

verne arase said:

Good.

Let them make their own cake.

Totally agree. Why should Apple support other computer companies? All this would do is give Congress another reason to investigate their monopolistic activities. 

seanismorris

The only way I can see Apple doing so, is something like Apple Silicon to enable the Apple Store on TVs.  It would better allow Apple to control the user experience and maintain security.

....
Edit

I can also see Apple CarPlay benefiting from Apple Silicon.  When you own the hardware it’s easier to control the product (software) roadmap.
The “problem” is auto manufacturers would be locked into Apple’s ecosystem.  Apple would need to offer additional perks to get them to do so.  It would make things simpler though...

That would allow a push into premium speaker systems to cars, but add to antitrust concerns.  But, as long Apple offered compatibility to other systems (Boses etc.) it wouldn’t be a dealbreaker.  An example of a benefit, audio output could be calibrated to where people are located within the vehicle to improve sound quality.

InspiredCode

I could see Apple licensing for companion products.  Think TVs, stereos, VR headsets, CarPlay, self-driving, etc.  I don’t think it will ever happen outside these areas.

shamino

Makes perfect sense to me.  The A-series of chips are designed to work hand-in-hand with Apple's software.  If they started selling these chips to others, those customers would start demanding features important to their products, but irrelevant (or maybe even counter-productive) to Apple's products.

Apple would be forced to choose between two very bad options.  Either implement those customers' design requests and compromise Apple products.  Or refuse to implement those designs and be accused of deliberately crippling competitors' products, ultimately leading to costly lawsuits.

Far better to just do what they're doing now.  It's not like there aren't plenty of ARM-based processors from other vendors that their competitors can use.

Beats

rob53 said:

verne arase said:

Good.

Let them make their own cake.

Totally agree. Why should Apple support other computer companies? All this would do is give Congress another reason to investigate their monopolistic activities. 

This is reason for Congress to call foul play. They'll say Apple has a monopoly on their own chips and they need to share.

DAalseth

Beats said:

rob53 said:

verne arase said:

Good.

Let them make their own cake.

Totally agree. Why should Apple support other computer companies? All this would do is give Congress another reason to investigate their monopolistic activities. 

This is reason for Congress to call foul play. They'll say Apple has a monopoly on their own chips and they need to share.

This the the problem 
If they don't sell A Series chips to other companies, and political types get upset they aren't sharing and sue or legislate.
If they DO sell A Series chips to others then people will get upset that they are becoming too powerful and they'll sue or legislate.
Damned if you do Damned if you don't

ne1

“...unleashed another round of innovation.” 

This is a VERY interesting sentence— he seems to imply that there are exciting cross platform macOS / iOS  products or software on the horizon. 

I’m trying to figure out what future product/capability he’s implicating. 

anonconformist

ne1 said:

“...unleashed another round of innovation.” 

This is a VERY interesting sentence— he seems to imply that there are exciting cross platform macOS / iOS  products or software on the horizon. 

I’m trying to figure out what future product/capability he’s implicating. 

By going to Apple Silicon (and really, all their other smaller devices already are using low-power versions) it’s trivial to have the only significant differences in capability for devices being speed and user interface: the guts are almost identical to those machines, with only minor device driver differences and hardware differences for things like touchscreens.  When you can count on all the device SOCs having the same AI hardware support, crypto support, whatever it is, it allows a far more unified OS/device capability and makes it even easier to lure developers to develop for Apple devices in general: to a fairly large degree (but not completely) with SwiftUI and the hardware commonalities it means developers can reach far more potential customers for a given amount of learning the platform.  

SwiftUI can’t do everything the older MacOS and UIKit SDKs can as of yet, but it’s getting there, and for a lot of things, it’s easier to do in SwiftUI than the other older SDKs.  How SwiftUI works is a huge abstraction of the user interface that reduces the number of moving parts you need to understand to create a viable application, combined with Combine that’s integrated deeply in it.

Rayz2016

shamino said:

Makes perfect sense to me.  The A-series of chips are designed to work hand-in-hand with Apple's software.  If they started selling these chips to others, those customers would start demanding features important to their products, but irrelevant (or maybe even counter-productive) to Apple's products.

Apple would be forced to choose between two very bad options.  Either implement those customers' design requests and compromise Apple products.  Or refuse to implement those designs and be accused of deliberately crippling competitors' products, ultimately leading to costly lawsuits.

Far better to just do what they're doing now.  It's not like there aren't plenty of ARM-based processors from other vendors that their competitors can use.

This is precisely why they won’t do it, and precisely why they won’t buy ARM. 

And I think about five years from now, one of their competitors will trigger a federal investigation citing that Apple’s domination in chip design makes it impossible for them to compete. 

Rayz2016

anonconformist said:

ne1 said:

“...unleashed another round of innovation.” 

This is a VERY interesting sentence— he seems to imply that there are exciting cross platform macOS / iOS  products or software on the horizon. 

I’m trying to figure out what future product/capability he’s implicating. 

By going to Apple Silicon (and really, all their other smaller devices already are using low-power versions) it’s trivial to have the only significant differences in capability for devices being speed and user interface: the guts are almost identical to those machines, with only minor device driver differences and hardware differences for things like touchscreens.  When you can count on all the device SOCs having the same AI hardware support, crypto support, whatever it is, it allows a far more unified OS/device capability and makes it even easier to lure developers to develop for Apple devices in general: to a fairly large degree (but not completely) with SwiftUI and the hardware commonalities it means developers can reach far more potential customers for a given amount of learning the platform.  

SwiftUI can’t do everything the older MacOS and UIKit SDKs can as of yet, but it’s getting there, and for a lot of things, it’s easier to do in SwiftUI than the other older SDKs.  How SwiftUI works is a huge abstraction of the user interface that reduces the number of moving parts you need to understand to create a viable application, combined with Combine that’s integrated deeply in it.

You should post more often. 

Rayz2016

DAalseth said:

Beats said:

rob53 said:

verne arase said:

Good.

Let them make their own cake.

Totally agree. Why should Apple support other computer companies? All this would do is give Congress another reason to investigate their monopolistic activities. 

This is reason for Congress to call foul play. They'll say Apple has a monopoly on their own chips and they need to share.

This the the problem 
If they don't sell A Series chips to other companies, and political types get upset they aren't sharing and sue or legislate.
If they DO sell A Series chips to others then people will get upset that they are becoming too powerful and they'll sue or legislate.
Damned if you do Damned if you don't

Step 1: the competition has to get Apple Silicon recognised as essential technology. 

Grayeagle

That TSMC chip manufacturing plant in Chandler AZ  will become a legislative pawn as Congress attempts to "level the playing field" by breaking up Apple. 

lkrupp

Well, if Apple doesn’t license Apple Silicon there will be another hue and cry for anti-trust actions. /s

SpamSandwich

Grayeagle said:

That TSMC chip manufacturing plant in Chandler AZ  will become a legislative pawn as Congress attempts to "level the playing field" by breaking up Apple. 

I don’t see it happening.

lkrupp

Rayz2016 said:

DAalseth said:

Beats said:

rob53 said:

verne arase said:

Good.

Let them make their own cake.

Totally agree. Why should Apple support other computer companies? All this would do is give Congress another reason to investigate their monopolistic activities. 

This is reason for Congress to call foul play. They'll say Apple has a monopoly on their own chips and they need to share.

This the the problem 
If they don't sell A Series chips to other companies, and political types get upset they aren't sharing and sue or legislate.
If they DO sell A Series chips to others then people will get upset that they are becoming too powerful and they'll sue or legislate.
Damned if you do Damned if you don't

Step 1: the competition has to get Apple Silicon recognised as essential technology. 

No step 1 needed. They’ll just snap their fingers and there it will be. But I think the most pertinent question is why Apple would even consider doing something like this. 

shamino

Rayz2016 said:

This is precisely why they won’t do it, and precisely why they won’t buy ARM. 

And I think about five years from now, one of their competitors will trigger a federal investigation citing that Apple’s domination in chip design makes it impossible for them to compete. 

That rumor about Apple buying ARM is nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of some pundits.

Apple would be completely insane to do that.  They want to sell computers and consumer products.  They have absolutely no desire to take over stewardship for every single ARM-based chip sold worldwide.  In addition to setting off a zillion red-flags regarding anti-competitive behavior, it would be a massive and expensive responsibility.  There is no hypothetical set of circumstances where I can imagine such a move producing any benefit to Apple, and all have massive downsides.  No way, it won't ever happen.

As for competitors alleging that they can't succeed without Apple's silicon, I'd love to see the lawsuit where they all swear under oath that all of the decades-old industry leaders (including Intel and AMD) are incapable of producing a commercially viable product.  Again, I can't see it happening.

I can see some politicians throwing around baseless accusations in order to try and get votes from people who hate corporations in general, but there's no possible way such a suit will ever have merit.

MplsP

On one hand I agree, but the A series processors are quite powerful and just because something has an Apple processor doesn’t mean you expect it to be a Mac. Look how many devices have intel processors, or the QC snapdragon. The features of those are dictated by the companies using them, not QC. 

If Apple started selling its processors it would enable and pay for the R&D to improve them. That gets to be a slippery slope, but from a business perspective it makes sense. 

Another are I wouldn’t mind them selling their silicon is if they were to develop a 5G modem. More competition for QC would be a good thing. 

wizard69

rob53 said:

verne arase said:

Good.

Let them make their own cake.

Totally agree. Why should Apple support other computer companies? All this would do is give Congress another reason to investigate their monopolistic activities. 

Actually congress could investigate them for not selling the processors.  Congress can investigate Apple for any imagined or real excuse they can come up with so Congress has nothing to do with this issue.

The best reason for Apple to start selling chips is to have a wider base to spread development expenses across.   Apple could literally get silicon customers to pay for the development process.

wizard69

shamino said:

I can see some politicians throwing around baseless accusations in order to try and get votes from people who hate corporations in general, but there's no possible way such a suit will ever have merit.

This right here is a problem there is a very real element of elected officials using the system to appeal to with nothing between the ears.