Re: wow
TSMC is extremely capacity limited, despite being by far the largest foundry on Earth, because almost everyone on Earth goes to them to have chips fabbed.
Apple needs to have a backup plan in place in case they can't get the chip volumes they require from TSMC. I suspect they'd prefer to use TSMC for the A9, and surely will do a design that targets both TSMC's and Samsung/GF's processes, so they can switch sources as needed if one runs into any production delays or capacity constraints.
Going to TSMC probably caused a lot of pain for Samsung as they were left with a lot of excess capacity. Apple may have got a very nice discount to win their business back.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
