‘Apple pays less per device than competitors to Arm for architecture’

Apple pays Arm 30 cents per device for use of the company’s chip architecture. That is a lower rate than competitors such as Qualcomm and MediaTek, although those companies actually earn less per telephone.

While Qualcomm and MediaTek each contribute 10 percent to Arm’s turnover, Apple contributes only 5 percent. reports The Information. At 30 cents per phone, Arm makes tens of millions of dollars a year on iPhones. Apple uses Arm’s chip architecture, but creates its own microarchitectures for its SoCs. This is also the case at Qualcomm, MediaTek also uses many microarchitectures and GPUs from Arm in its SoCs.

Apple also uses Arm Socs in its Mac computers, Apple Watches and iPads, although the company makes fewer of them than iPhones. Apple has been able to get a good deal because of its position in the mobile market, The Information reports. It bothers Arm, as the article shows.