Apple and Qualcomm have each offered more than a $1
billion to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) to
obtain a dedicated supply of processor chips, and both
their offers have been rejected, according to a Bloomberg
report.
Apple uses TSMC's chips for its iPhones and iPads, while
Qualcomm is the leading supplier of application processors
to the rival Android platform of mobile equipment.
Apple has been reported to be working with TSMC to bring
up a 28-nm A6 processor. Meanwhile Qualcomm, which has
designed the Snapdragon processor, is known to be suffering
from a shortage of supply at the 28-nm node.
In July Morris Chang, chairman and CEO of TSMC, said the
company was considering operating single-customer wafer
fabs.
However, as a foundry supplier TSMC profits from serving
many fabless chip companies, including Broadcom, Nvidia,
MediaTek and many others.