salmonstk

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salmonstk
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  • Apple announces Apple Silicon Mac special event for November 10

    salmonstksalmonstk
    I would be interested in Appleinsider doing a little speculation about differentiation of products.

    If they release 13 inch air and two 13 inch pros how do they differentiate?  With iPhones there has been no differentiation of new products by chip.  A14 across the board.  Differ. has been on screen size and camera quality and to a lesser extend storage and ram.  3 13 inch are the same screen size and camera not that important.  

    Current MacBooks differ by graphics "card", clock speed of chip, and touch bar and number of USB ports. 

    So what do people think will differentiate 3 13 inch MacBooks- especially of Apple follows iPhone and iPad example and puts same CPU in every model.
    cornchipwatto_cobra

  • ARM Mac coming in first half of 2021, says Ming-Chi Kuo

    salmonstksalmonstk
    red oak said:
    There is also (I believe) a substantial cost savings to Apple here 

    Assumptions: 

    -  Half of Macs use internally developed Apple CPU: 10M/yr    (the other half stays on Intel)
    -  Current cost Apple pays per Intel chip:  $200  (likely higher)
    -  Cost to Apple to manufacture new chip at TMSC:   $30 (likely lower)
    -  Dedicated Apple CPU chip employees and cost:   300 employees x $400K/yr fully weighted cost =  $120M 


    Total Intel Cost:  10M x $180 =  $2B
    Total internal Apple Cost:   10M x $30 =  $300M + $120M = $420M 


    Total Annual Savings:    $2B - $420M = $1.6 Billion 


    It would be $3.2 Billion if Apple were to move it all internal.   That would increase overall gross margin of the company by ~ 1%.    It would be a huge financial win.   But more importantly, it gets Apple untangled from the mess that is Intel

    Not included here is the massive R&D effort/spend to get to launch.   Maybe this is one of the driver's of Apple R&D spend exploding over the last 5 years 

    Lots of assumptions/guesses there but I think your point is an under appreciated motivation for this.  The marginal cost will go from something like 200 a computer to 50.  All the other costs you describe are sunk costs that as another reader mentioned are being counted for already in development for iPhone iPad.

    So while the revenue difference is not huge it could allow Apple to price Macs closer to PCs while still maintaining the same per unit profit.  
    randominternetperson