Apple believes the iPhone 16 lineup is going to be a hit and has massively boosted the demand for the A18 chip.
Apple Seeking up to 100 Million A18 Chips for the iPhone 16 Lineup, Most Likely for Apple Intelligence Demand
The new iPhone 16 is expected to feature the current A17 Pro chip while the iPhone 16 Pro will feature the new A18 Pro. This is how Apple works this days, the base model gets the year-old chip while the ‘Pro’ model gets the latest sauce. It is what it is.
According to a report by CTEE, Apple is anticipating a huge demand for the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro. The report says that Apple is seeking an order of 90 to 100 million A18 chips from TSMC, which is massive.
If you compare this number to last year, Apple placed an order of 80 to 90 million chips. It also makes sense why Apple is doing this – Apple Intelligence and its demand from its user-base.
See, this year’s flagship feature is definitely Apple Intelligence, but the hardware requirement is somewhat bonkers. You need a phone or tablet with at least 8GB of RAM in order to run the large language model locally. Surprisingly, the iPhone 15 Pro is that phone currently and the iPhone 15, which has 6GB of RAM, loses out on the feature completely.
It would be safe to assume that Apple’s iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro will both have at least 8GB of RAM, although there is a chance Apple might bless the latter with slightly more RAM to lure people in to the higher-end model. I’m just manifesting here, who knows Apple might just stick with 8GB of RAM across the board.
