iPhone 15: Apple would be the first manufacturer with 3nm processors?

According to Taiwan chip industry sources, Apple will likely be the first smartphone manufacturer to install processors with a structural width of just three nanometers in its devices. The reason could contract with the world’s largest chip manufacturer TSMC. Such as the Taiwan branch service DigiTimes Citing “industry sources”, the first smartphones with processors manufactured at the 3-nanometer scale are not expected to be available before the second half of 2023.

Apple will likely be the first vendor to boast of building next-generation chips into its devices. This is made possible through Apple’s exclusive partnership with Taiwanese chip contract manufacturer TSMC, which is massively producing the Apple Bionic SoCs for use in its smartphones, tablets, and now PCs. While TSMC is also the manufacturing partner of Qualcomm and MediaTek, the other two major smartphone chip vendors are likely to launch their 3nm SoCs later.

In concrete terms, it can be assumed that Apple will be able to sell the first smartphones with 3-nanometer SoCs as early as the autumn of 2023 with the iPhone 15. Like MediaTek, Qualcomm will probably not make its first corresponding chip widely available until late 2023 or early 2024, so Android devices can only be equipped with 3nm chips after the iPhone.

Although TSMC has already started production of the first chips, which are assigned to the first variants of the 3-nanometer node, they would not be produced in relevant quantities. Volume production should start relatively soon. Apple would be the first major customer for the 3nm chips at TSMC, before other customers want larger quantities of such chips produced by the world’s largest contract manufacturer from 2024.