Analysis of In-house Development of Semiconductor Chips by Smartphone Brands

With the global semiconductor industry increasingly adopting specialization, the design and development of application processor (AP) and system on a chip (SoC) for smartphones are primarily undertaken by integrated circuit (IC) design companies. However, in the wake of Apple's successful release of in-house developed chips, various smartphone brands have started to adopt the same strategy.

For smartphone brands, developing semiconductor components in-house requires a significant initial investment. Additionally, a SoC consists of various modules and architectures, such as image signal processors (ISP) and modems. Chip designers are tested to see if they can achieve the best balance between performance and power consumption by optimizing the allocation of resources between these modules and architectures. Overall, developing semiconductor components in-house is a complex task for smartphone brands without sufficient prior experience and technological expertise. Nevertheless, driven by various motivations, smartphone brands still want to pursue this goal.