I agree. I think Apple will be LEAST impacted by that, as they have the high end market wrapped up, and the high end buyer doesn’t have am issue dropping a grand every two years for a new phone.
Regarding this article, since this intersects the area I work in, I will offer a comment. This guy has absolutely no clue, and is just guessing. As I mentioned previously, Apple is significantly ahead (with performance) of the other companies making the SoC used in phones. They didn’t get there via relying on area/density improvements from moving to newer processes, those are a given; they got there by buying a company that made innovative ARM processors, and continuing to drive improvements in the micro-arcitecture since.
Other than modest incremental performance and power improvements, it’s not clear what is in the future for the Ax. The author speculates a new video processor, but unless Apple has some new software that needs that, it is not clear what value there is there. Higher resolution displays? Why? The retina display is already a higher resolution than the eye can see. Maybe they are going to do somethng similar to the Continuum feature in Windows 10 Phone (connect your phone to monitor, keyboard, becomes a desktop replacement for people on the go).
Good post I found this line to be hysterical:
“which should mean good things for TSMC (as this should mean more wafers required at a given yield rate).’