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back to article Apple now spends more on chips than top three PC makers combined

In case you were wondering whether the PC industry is still in a slump, the numbers are in on semiconductor purchasing in 2013 – and once again, the biggest spenders weren't PC vendors. According to the latest figures from market research firm IHS iSuppli, Apple and Samsung again topped the list of the biggest semiconductor …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "HP, the biggest spender of the three, bought around $10.1bn worth of semiconductors in 2013 – merely a third of what Apple bought. What's more, HP's spending actually decreased by 6.5 per cent since 2012."

    HP buys the most expensive processors that Intel has to offer; the Itanium line.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Price is irrelevant, they buy those in tiny quantities. HP has always spent a fraction on Itanium CPUs of that they spend on x86 CPUs. Even when you factor in the price of Itanium that spending has never come close.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      The PC is dead.

      All hail the Tablet?

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      1. csumpi
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        Paris Hilton

        "The PC is dead. All hail the Tablet?"

        Man, I keep hitting F6 on my tablet but it still doesn't want to compile my C++ code. Gotta jump back on the PC I guess.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
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          Holmes

          I would be interested to see what Google, Amazon, Facebook, et al are spending on chips for their cloud server armies. I'm thinking it wouldn't be insignificant compared to the consumer electronics companies, but I could be way off base. But I'm betting Intel and AMD are making a nice chunk of change off those cloud service companies.

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  2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Self supply

    I wonder what the figures would look like if they included semiconductor companies made themselves. (I'm thinking of Samsung at least, here...)

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Self supply

      Why would that matter? obviously Samsung makes a lot of stuff, that's their business making things. They seriously suck at producing anything new and innovative.

      Galaxy Gear is a perfect example of that. They produced something fairly original (Pebble is a much more simple and different design) and the reviews are all pretty much the same, they suck at industrial design and they suck at producing software.

      There's only one reason to own your own production facilities, to eliminate the profit margin on production. But if you do own your own production facility you have to ensure that it remains competitive. It's much easier to just put tenders out to the market and get a good price.

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      1. Gordon 10
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        Re: Self supply

        Anon commentard who thinks they know better than Samsungs top brass. I'm shocked - shocked I tells you - that they are not listening to your wisdom.

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        1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Self supply

        >There's only one reason to own your own production facilities, to eliminate the profit margin on production.

        Or to stop you waking up one day and discovering you can't launch a phone because somebody has bought all the production capacity of flash or screens.

        I don't know how the report classifies Samsung's own production - the company generally runs divisions as very competitive business - it sells chips to it's main competitor for example. So Samsung's $50Bn probably includes a lot of chips made by Samsung fabs

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      3. jonathanb Silver badge
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        Re: Self supply

        It matters because Apple has to buy in all the chips it uses, and many of them come from Samsung. Samsung also makes those chips for its own phones and slabs, and they don't appear in the sales stats because they are internal transfers.

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        1. Tom 13
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          Re: Self supply

          No, you exclude the production because you don't want to double count. You either count all of the production or all of the consumption, but never parts of each.

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      4. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Self supply

        >they suck at industrial design and they suck at producing software.

        Doesn't bode well for the UAE then - Samsung is building their nuclear power station...... perhaps it's not too late to put a call in to Ives and co.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Apple now spends more on chips than top three PC makers combined "

    Thats cos Jobs was vegetarian, the rest are eating Pies

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  4. Gordon 10

    It's not really a surprise.

    Only Apple and Samsung have huge thriving smartphone, tablet and laptop businesses. The others are all more specialised.

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  5. GitMeMyShootinIrons

    I that think I bought more chips than Apple...

    Which is why I'm dieting now....

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  6. Patrice

    I don't know if this matters but Samsung makes tons of other things that uses chips that aren't computers phones or tablets. They make TVs DVD players all sorts of HIFI and appliances all of which uses chips and aren't in competition with PCs. The Samsung stove that uses glass touch panels aren't running on vacuum tubes.

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  7. Dropper

    Apologies in advance

    "Apple now spends more on chips than top three PC makers combined"

    Yes but what about fish?

    -Apologies to all for not being able to stop myself posting this.

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    1. PJI
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      Re: Apologies in advance

      and the mushy peas interface. Oops, too much vinegar.

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  8. Rebelyell

    I wonder if Microsoft's Windows regular crashing, malware and virus infections has anything to do with it!

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  9. JPond
    Joke

    Re: Apologies in advance

    Apples, fish'n'chips, peas, far too health....I prefer KitKat on my Galaxy.

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  10. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    How much does this depend on the chips in question. My understanding is that your average iDevice is quite likely to contain a few pieces of pricey custom silicon, whereas your bog-standard PC gets by on commodity chips from Intel and the DRAM people. I don't suppose this if enough to nullify the premise of the article, but we are comparing beige-box-shifters with purveyors of premium fondle-ables here.

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    1. Tom 13
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      @Ken Hagan

      A fair point, but it comes with another. I was under the impression the CISC chips had a higher margin on them than RISC chips did. So Intel make more money shifting fewer chips than Samsung.

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