Yesterday, Dialog Semiconductor announced a $600 million deal with Apple, including licensing its power management technology, transferring some of its assets, and delivering 300 R&D engineers to Apple.
300 R&D engineers are about 16% of Dialog's global workforce. In addition, Apple will take over some of Dialog's equipment in Italy, the UK and Germany.
According to the announcement, Apple will pay $300 million in cash to Dialog and prepay $300 million in purchases for products from 2019 to 2021, products include power management, audio subsystems, charging and other mixed-signal ICs.
It is undeniable that Apple has now paid more and more attention to the design and development of chips and internal components. For Apple, although the initial investment in independent research and development is large, once the research and development is completed, it can save a large amount of patent fees for itself each year, and the supply chain will no longer be subject to suppliers.
It can be expected that Apple is entering the semiconductor industry, and there may be more electronic components produced by itself in the future. For suppliers who are overly dependent on Apple, it is a matter of vigilance.
