raymondai

It just like the SE, iPhone mini series should be a longer cycle product, which compare to Pro series, may be 4-6 years for the target customer.
And a Flip/Foldable iPhone will eclipse this segment of the market, at higher price.

And Chang has said, TSMC has a “Night Hawk Team” to compete with Samsung on 16nm order from Apple, in those days, TSMC’s engineers work in 3 Shifts for 24Hrs to catch up and win Samsung eventually.

“… There's no one out there who is actively debating between AirPods Max and a $5 set of iConcept clones...”

I am debating with my wife…
(just kidding ~XD)

According to the information on 2022 from the chairman of Largan, one of the biggest camera module supplier of mobile phone in the world from Taiwan, and it is one of the the main supplier to iPhone too, there is a bottleneck to optimize “ Variable aperture”, he explained that there are 2 fixed aperture in the lens, and it is really hard to optimize the performance for both, that mean you can do better or say optimize to just one aperture, then get a inferior result from the other aperture, if you try to balance the performance, as a result, you will have not good enough image from both aperture.
Fast forward to 2024, the same chairman said the company will capable to provide the “Variable aperture” lens around 2026-2027 to main customer and upgrade the resolution of the periscope lens on 2025-2026. 
The time frame match what Mr. Kuo said, but I have to mention that he may saying another supplier of iPhone, Sunny Optical from China, I don’t have any internal figures, it should be the biggest camera module supplier of iPhone by now, and it is a very aggressive market leader in the world.

Intel? What is the point? Run Apple own Fab to make chips? Does Intel reach 5nm yet?
I think it is not even under radar.
For semiconductor related, Qualcomm, ARM, even buy a big share of TSMC or Nvidia may be a better choice.