TSMC Founder Reveals Why Apple Selected Them Over Intel as Customized Chip Provider

TSMC founder Morris Chang has revealed that Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner rejected Intel as an iPhone chip manufacturing accomplice in 2011, and advised him that “Intel simply doesn’t know easy methods to be a foundry.”

In a brand new YouTube interview with Acquired, Chang recounts how Apple briefly paused discussions with TSMC in February 2011 when Intel’s CEO approached Cook dinner about manufacturing Apple’s iPhone chips. On the time, Intel was already supplying processors for Apple’s Mac lineup.

Regardless of the prevailing relationship, Cook dinner finally selected TSMC over Intel after simply two months of consideration. In accordance with Chang, Cook dinner’s decisive remark about Intel’s foundry capabilities got here throughout a personal assembly at Apple’s headquarters in March 2011.

“I wasn’t too apprehensive,” Chang stated, explaining that TSMC had benefits over Intel in manufacturing capabilities and buyer belief. “I knew a number of Intel’s clients in Taiwan, and none of them favored Intel. Intel all the time acted like they had been the one man for microprocessors.”

Chang stated that TSMC’s success was constructed on its responsive strategy to buyer wants. “When the client asks a number of issues, we now have discovered to reply to each request,” he defined. “A few of them had been loopy, a few of them had been irrational, however we reply to every request courteously. Intel has by no means performed that.”

The choice proved pivotal for each corporations. TSMC went on to turn into Apple’s unique chip producer, producing all Apple silicon chips, together with these for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

In the meantime, Intel’s foundry enterprise struggled for years to realize traction with exterior clients. Solely just lately did the corporate revamp its manufacturing technique with the institution of Intel Foundry, set as much as produce built-in circuits for exterior purchasers. In September 2024, for instance, Intel’s foundry enterprise secured Amazon’s AWS cloud providers unit as a buyer for customized AI chips.