According to Bloomberg News, Apple is exploring the opportunity to replace Intel processors’ semiconductor technology in its Macs with its in-house-based processors used in iPhones and iPads.
Apple chip hardware engineers believe that chip design they use in their mobile devices will grow to be able to deliver enough power to run Macs in coming days. Apple has invested heavily in developing its own chip designs based on ARM architecture for its mobile devices, including the iPad and iPhone, and it seems the next step is to take it forward and introduce it in Mac PCs.
ARM-based chips are much more power efficient than previous processors from Intel and have captured so well the mobile device market. Apple’s foray depends crucially on the ability to make the chips powerful enough to run such complex image processing programs on computers with high-resolution display.
If, in the coming years, Apple wants to offer customers a seamless user experience across all types of devices such as computers, smartphones, tablets and TVs, single-chip architecture would be a good idea to provide users a seamless experience. Apple’s vision is to make the devices more and more uniform and provide a seamless user experience across all form factors — from the iPhone to Mac.
The news may be bad for Intel. It has not managed to have a foothold in the tablet or smartphone market, and sales of PCs is stagnating. Intel’s market share on PCs is about 80%, while it has only a fraction on smaller mobile devices. Apple is a trendsetter and once it makes its own chip design, others will follow the same path.
“Apple is a trendsetter, and once they did their own chip, many others may pursue a similar path,” said Sergis Mushell, an analyst at Gartner Inc. “If mobility is more important than functionality, then we will have a completely different environment than we are dealing with today.”
Apple began to collaborate with Intel for the Mac in 2005, due to problems related to energy consumption and the limited availability of high-performance processors. Before Apple went to Intel, they used PowerPC chips from Motorola and IBM. But, these chips had fallen far behind what Intel could deliver. Taking a chance on breaking up this relationship with Intel is something that will sit deep in the top management of Apple.
Apple has recently launched its latest version of the A6 and A6X chip running in iPhone 5 and 4th-generation iPads. The company has acquired a number of hardware companies to take off its experience in the design of integrated circuits, such as chip-design maker PA Semi for $278 million in 2008 and, more recently Anobit, Israel-based flash memory firm.