Apple Increases Orders for Next-Gen Chips, Anticipates Strong Demand for iPhone 16 Series

TapTechNews July 2nd news, according to Taiwan media CTEE, supply chain sources revealed that Apple has increased the order volume of the next-generation chip and is expected to purchase 90 million to 100 million A18 chips from TSMC, which reflects Apple's anticipation of the strong demand for its iPhone 16 series.

It is reported that at the beginning of the release of the iPhone 15 series last year, the number of chips Apple purchased from TSMC was about 80 million to 90 million. The increase in this year's order volume suggests that Apple expects the demand for its 2024 new products to be higher.

The 'AppleIntelligence' function added in iOS 18 is expected to boost the first-sale volume. This function requires at least the iPhone 15 Pro model to operate, which means that users who bought the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus last year will not be able to enjoy Apple's new artificial intelligence function unless they upgrade to the iPhone 15 Pro or choose the iPhone 16 series models.

TapTechNews noted that the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus used the same A16 Bionic chip as the iPhone 14 Pro series last year, while the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 ProMax were equipped with the A17 Pro chip manufactured using TSMC's second-generation 3nm process (also known as 'N3E'). According to TSMC, N3E has a lower cost and a higher yield compared to the previous N3B process.

This year, it is expected that all four models of the iPhone 16 series will use the A18 series chips manufactured using the N3E process. Although using the N3E process, the A18 chips of the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus may follow the A17 Pro design of the iPhone 15 Pro model. At the same time, the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 ProMax may be equipped with a chip named 'A18 Pro', and the neural network engine of this chip will be upgraded with more cores, bringing more excellent AI/machine learning performance.

The running memory of the standard version of the iPhone 16 model may also increase from 6GB of the iPhone 15 to 8GB. This will make all iPhone 16 models have 8GB of memory, and Apple previously stated that this is the minimum requirement for running a large language model (the underlying algorithm of AI) locally on the device.

According to the previous years' practice, Apple is expected to release the new iPhone 16 series products around mid-September in autumn.