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.
There is good precedent for this (mfi, lightning, apple watch lugs.) I imagine this would be a spin off from an A-series chip, I doubt 3rd parties would need apple's latest and greatest.
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.
Your argument makes no business sense with Apple’s objectives: they could make money on the chips, but then the other competitor devices would be able to undercut them on cost on the total device and thus cost them profits on Apple devices, while also anchoring them to producing contracted amounts of chips for their competitors as a legal priority before fulfilling their own device needs, lest they befall the extreme danger of becoming a regulated monopoly. The reasons Intel wants and needs AMD to survive and do well enough to be competitive at minimum are:
Many entities need to have a backup option for replacement hardware, even with a little hardware design change, that performs comparable to what they already have, should their main supplier have a problem. Many government contracts have this. Apple in some unknown number of parts has more than a single supplier for supplier diversification for this reason, even if their regular supplier can (normally) provide for all their needed parts.
If only a single Intel X86/AMD64 ISA chip provider existed, they’d become a monopoly and subject to all those regulatory and other encumbrances that result.
AMD hasn’t been truly competitive more years than they have been mediocre: Intel has become complacent as a result. Real technical competition is needed in the market to keep technology progressing. If AMD didn’t exist, I believe other ISAs (more than ARM exists) would have eaten Intel’s lunch sooner, because of the Intel tax.
Apple allowed clones in the 90’s, and it almost killed them. Besides the reasons stated above, making and selling Apple Silicon to others would be reverting back to what was counterproductive to serving their own customers. If Apple keeps making a superior ecosystem of devices that people value, the price of being the ones eating the cost of all the Apple Silicon is amortized over a profitable and wide range of devices that achieve critical mass to result in lower effective per-chip costs than they’d ever get any other way, while also being constrained only by their own self-appointed constraints and technical realities, the latter of which affect all their competitors in the same way.
If Apple starts selling Apple Silicon to others, they’ve ceded any chance of whichever markets they are used in, and tie themselves down to other’s visions. I don’t see that happening until Apple concludes they aren’t able to be more than raw low-level infrastructure makers.
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.
They could investigate them for it, but as long as America remains America there's not much they could do about it.
Just because I make a better widget doesn't mean I have to let every competitor use my improved widget.
As for development cost: Apple doesn't need to defray the cost, and letting others use their technology would open them up to liability headaches they don't need.
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If Apple starts selling Apple Silicon to others, they’ve ceded any chance of whichever markets they are used in, and tie themselves down to other’s visions. I don’t see that happening until Apple concludes they aren’t able to be more than raw low-level infrastructure makers.
Just because I make a better widget doesn't mean I have to let every competitor use my improved widget.
As for development cost: Apple doesn't need to defray the cost, and letting others use their technology would open them up to liability headaches they don't need.