TSMC is often seen as a threat to Apple in various ways, such as being prioritized for chip supply, and also getting a lower price than other chip buyers.
For example, when TSMC increased the price of its chips by 20%, the increase that Apple had to pay to produce the A series chips was only 3%.
Based on reports by Bloomberg and DigiTimes, it was revealed why TSMC gave the special price. Apparently, during 2020, Apple contributed 25.9% to TSMC's revenue.
If TSMC's revenue during 2020 reached USD 45.51 billion, then around USD 11.4 billion of that income came from Apple. No other company can come close to Apple's contribution, the closest being MediaTek which accounts for 5.8% of TSMC's revenue.
Underneath it is AMD with 4.4%, and Qualcomm with only 3.9%. The rest are Broadcom (3.8%), Nvidia (2.8%), Sony (2.5%), Marvell (1.4%). STM (1.4%), ADI (1.06%), Intel (0.84%). Intel's small contribution is actually reasonable, because Intel has its own Intel production facility, although it is not as sophisticated as TSMC's chip production facility.
With such a large contribution, even a smaller percentage increase in prices will provide greater additional income than from other companies. What's more, the contribution of other companies to TSMC's revenue is mostly below 5%, even companies like Qualcomm's contribution is only 3.9%.
In fact, based on Q3 2021 data from Counterpoint, Apple's system on a chip market share is only in 3rd position, losing to MediaTek (1st position) and Qualcomm (2nd position).
Now Intel seems to want to produce more of its chips using the services of TSMC, which can be seen from a number of Intel executives including CEO Pat Gelsinger who visited Taiwan to visit TSMC.
Intel is seeking assurances from TSMC that it will have sufficient 3nm chip production capacity to meet Intel's orders. One of the chips that will reportedly be made with this 3nm process is Apple's A16 Bionic.
In addition to being interested in producing chips using TSMC's 3nm technology, Intel is also said to be interested in producing chips with 7nm, 6nm, and 5nm processes, which is reportedly done to prevent AMD - who is also a TSMC client - from getting a bigger market share.
