Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing may have a new best friend from Cupertino.
The world’s biggest chipmaker stands to earn as much as 20% of its revenue in the fourth quarter from supplying Apple with chips for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, according to Mark Li and David Dai. (The Bernstein Research analysts published a research note on the topic Thursday.)
Taiwan Semiconductor, which last year supplanted Samsung as the main supplier of processors for the latest model’s of Apple’s smartphone, reportedly has been running at capacity to get the chips to Apple’s assembly plants.
Latest news from @Chipworks: The A8 processor was fabricated at TSMC and uses a 20 nm CMOS manufacturing process.
— iFixit (@iFixit) September 19, 2014
Though TSM isn’t slated to report earnings until next week, the company said Thursday that sales in the month of September rose 35% from a year earlier to $2.5 billion. The pressure is on. Apple may be monitoring both TSM and Samsung “before finalizing the supply allocation at the two companies,” according Bernstein’s Li and Dai.
Apple’s new iPhone is a giant win for Taiwan Semiconductor
