How Apple Leverages its R&D

Apple leverages its R&D by buying 11 small companies over the last few years as is discussed in the article below.

For example,
"In 2010, Apple unveiled the first iPad. Inside of it was a powerful custom SoC designed by Apple called the A4. Later came the A5, A5X, A6, A6X, ....none of these outstanding SoCs would even be possible if Apple didn’t make a handful of strategic acquisitions over the last few years. In 2008, Apple picked up P.A. Semi ..., 2010 saw the acquisition of Intrinsity for ..., and Passif Semiconductor was purchased earlier this year"

See Apple iPad 4 – A6X teardown


Flash NAND is remaking computers, servers, mobile tablets, and cell phones architecture and Apple realizes it.

 "Anobit Technologies was founded in Israel in 2006. It developed dozens of patents for flash controllers,...Apple uses so many NAND chips in iPads, iPhones, iPods, and Macs, ...Apple acquired ... in December 2011 ... Any competitive edge Apple can find for creating cheaper and better flash-based devices holds the potential to drastically change its production chain. Flash storage is constantly improving, and it’s in Apple’s best interest to stay on the cutting edge of speed and reliability improvements."

HDR photography, face detection, and iAds  will be integrated in future Apple products (see below).

 Ron

Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/

11 Apple products which were realised via strategic acquisitions

09 Sep 2013 by Grant Brunner, 09 Sep 2013Features

Apple is widely thought of as a major innovator in the tech industry. While it’s true that Cupertino does employ some of the best designers and engineers in the world, Apple simply wouldn’t be where it is without a large number of strategic acquisitions. Most notably, iOS and OS X wouldn’t even exist without the purchase of NeXT.

Of course, that acquisition also brought Steve Jobs back to Apple, but that serves to highlight the strength of a smart acquisition. Not only will purchasing a company net you products and patents, but you’re gaining an influx of amazing employees as well.

In this article, I’d like to walk through a number of important acquisitions Apple has made in the last decade. From the A6 SoC through multitouch displays to Siri, Apple has relied heavily on acquired technology to build the iPhone, iPad, and iOS. It’s important to remember that purchases like these help make Apple what it is, and even the best engineers in the world need some fresh ideas from time to time.

Multitouch

FingerWorks, founded by doctoral students at the University of Delaware, focused on developing numerous devices like the TouchStream multitouch keyboard. Its quirky products never took off on a large scale, but the core technology and patents were successful enough to garner the attention of Apple. In 2005, Apple purchased the company, and effectively shut down the existing business. Two years later, the iPhone came out, and heavily featured multitouch technology.

Even if Apple was working on multitouch devices before the acquisition, it’s clear that the expertise and patent portfolio that came along with FingerWorks helped make multitouch displays become an industry standard.

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App Store Genius

Chomp was founded in 2009, and served as a search engine for iOS and Android apps. The search tool was available on the web and as an app, and it enabled users to discover new and relevant apps more easily than Apple or Google’s built-in search engines. It received millions of dollars of venture capital funding, and even partnered with Verizon to build a backend for the telecom’s app store. Despite its success as an independent company, Apple was able to snatch up Chomp in early 2012 for a reported $50 million (£32 million). The Android and iOS apps disappeared, and the Chomp technology appears to be powering app searches and the App Store Genius functionality currently featured on the App Store.

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Custom SoCs

In 2010, Apple unveiled the first iPad. Inside of it was a powerful custom SoC designed by Apple called the A4. Later came the A5, A5X, A6, A6X, and the rumoured upcoming A7 chip. However, none of these outstanding SoCs would even be possible if Apple didn’t make a handful of strategic acquisitions over the last few years. In 2008, Apple picked up P.A. Semi for $280 million (£180 million), 2010 saw the acquisition of Intrinsity for $121 million (£77 million), and Passif Semiconductor was purchased earlier this year for an unknown figure. With this ever increasing pool of talent and patents, Apple continues to make a name for itself in the world of SoC design.

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Apple Maps

Apple’s maps have been a bit of a sore spot for the last year. Apple’s contract with Google ran out, and Apple decided to build its own solution. Of course, a few purchases helped get the ball rolling. Placebase was purchased back in July of 2009, Poly9 was added to Apple’s portfolio in July of 2010, and 3D mapping company C3 Technologies was acquired in August of 2011. This amalgam of purchases, alongside partnerships with companies like TomTom, led to the launch of Apple’s own mapping service in 2012. It was received very poorly, but Apple hasn’t stopped trying. WiFiSlam was purchased in March of this year, Locationary and HopStop.com were picked up in July, and Embark was snatched up by Cupertino just a couple of weeks ago. With this much mapping prowess under its roof, Apple is clearly taking this problem very seriously.

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Flash storage

Anobit Technologies was founded in Israel in 2006. It developed dozens of patents for flash controllers, and quickly gained substantial notoriety and venture funding. Since Apple uses so many NAND chips in iPads, iPhones, iPods, and Macs, it was no surprise when Apple acquired the Israeli company and its patent portfolio in December 2011 for a whopping $390 million (£250 million). Any competitive edge Apple can find for creating cheaper and better flash-based devices holds the potential to drastically change its production chain. Flash storage is constantly improving, and it’s in Apple’s best interest to stay on the cutting edge of speed and reliability improvements.

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HDR photography

Apple introduced built-in HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography on the iPhone 4 with the release of iOS 4.1. By taking multiple photos at different exposures, and then merging the visual data together, photographers can end up with better looking pictures with more detail in dark and bright areas. To help improve the core technology, Apple purchased a UK-based company called IMSense for an undisclosed amount of money in September 2010. As the hardware and software of the iPhone have improved, so have the overall quality of HDR images. Now, amazing HDR techniques are available to even novice photographers using iPhones.

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Face detection

Faces might just be the most important part of personal photos. Finding and identifying faces is vital for good photography software, and Apple does a decent job on most fronts. iPhoto automatically finds faces, and attempts to guess who is in each photo based on previous input. On iOS, the camera app automatically detects faces, and enables developers to easily implement live photo manipulation. Part of this clever face detection is thanks to the 2010 acquisition of a Swedish company called Polar Rose. With that core technology, any developer on iOS can take advantage of automatic face detection thanks to the built-in Core Image API.

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iAds

After Google began to make serious moves against Apple in the smartphone market, Cupertino decided to get into the advertising game – seemingly in retaliation towards its former partner. After a bit of a bidding war, Google was able to secure the purchase of AdMob in 2009. Not to be outdone, Apple purchased Quattro Wireless in 2010 to compete directly against Mountain View. iAds was born out of this purchase, although it never really took off on a large scale. Even so, this acquisition remains a notable point in the fascinating breakdown of the working relationship between Google and Apple.

Read more: http://www.itproportal.com/2013/09/09/11-apple-products-which-were-realised-via-strategic-acquisitions/#ixzz2eUrfkP4e

Smartphone/ OS Market share: Apple, Samsung, HTC...

It will be interesting to see how Samsung Galaxy S4 will impact second quarter market shares. See below results from first quarter 2013.





Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/

comScore Reports March 2013 U.S. Smartphone Subscriber Market Share

Android Phone and iPhone Now Combine for 91 Percent of U.S. Smartphone User Base

http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/5/comScore_Reports_March_2013_U.S._Smartphone_Subscriber_Market_Share

RESTON, VA, May 3, 2013 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. smartphone industry during the three month average period ending March 2013. Apple ranked as the top smartphone manufacturer with 39 percent OEM market share, while Google Android led as the #1 smartphone platform with 52 percent platform market share.

Smartphone OEM Market Share

136.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (58 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in March, up 9 percent since December. Apple ranked as the top OEM with 39 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers (up 2.7 percentage points from December). Samsung ranked second with 21.7 percent market share (up 0.7 percentage points), followed by HTC with 9 percent, Motorola with 8.5 percent and LG with 6.8 percent.

Top Smartphone OEMs 3 Month Avg. Ending Mar. 2013 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Dec. 2012 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
	Dec-12	Mar-13	Point Change
Total Mobile Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Apple	36.3%	39.0%	2.7
Samsung	21.0%	21.7%	0.7
HTC	10.2%	9.0%	-1.2
Motorola	9.1%	8.5%	-0.6
LG	7.1%	6.8%	-0.3

Smartphone Platform Market Share

Google Android ranked as the top smartphone platform with 52 percent market share (71.1 million subscribers), while Apple’s share increased 2.7 percentage points to 39 percent (53.3 million subscribers). BlackBerry ranked third with 5.2 percent share, followed by Microsoft (3 percent) and Symbian (0.5 percent).

Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending Mar. 2013 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Dec. 2012 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
	Dec-12	Mar-13	Point Change
Total Smartphone Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google	53.4%	52.0%	-1.4
Apple	36.3%	39.0%	2.7
BlackBerry	6.4%	5.2%	-1.2
Microsoft	2.9%	3.0%	0.1
Symbian	0.6%	0.5%	-0.1

About MobiLens
MobiLens data is derived from an intelligent online survey of a nationally representative sample of mobile subscribers age 13 and older. Data on mobile phone usage refers to a respondent’s primary mobile phone and does not include data related to a respondent’s secondary device

1st Time Smartphones Outsold Feature Phones

The article below documents the fast pace of smartphones' growth and shows that for the first quarter of 2013, the sales of smartphones surpassed feature phones. Smartphone growth is driven by access to fingertip computing anywhere, anytime (see 2010 article Four Billion Cell Users : Computing Power Anytime, Anyplace).

between the five top vendors, Apple loss market share and had the smallest increase of growth between 2012 and 2013. This is due to the growth in emerging countries where the iPhone is too expensive relative to other smartphones. It is not likely that Apple will introduce an inexpensive iPhone in China considering the tough price competition it would face from the much cheaper Android phones. People in emerging countries are more price conscious. Apple will want to maintain its high quality brand and its higher pricing and is likely to repeat its Mac vs PC history see the 2008 story -Are iPhone and Android Smart Phones Repeating the History of Mac vs. PC in the 80s

The fast growth of smartphones in 2012 and 2013 by Huawei, ZTE, CoolPad, and other companies in emerging countries was made possible by the chips manufactured by MediaTek (see January story about MediaTek Apples' Cook in China (MediaTek Impact)).

Ron

Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.Semiconductor information and news at - www.maltiel-consulting.com

 

Smartphones outpace feature phones for first time ever

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57581566-94/smartphones-outpace-feature-phones-for-first-time-ever/

by Jonathan Skillings , April 26, 2013 5:29 AM PDT

 

In the first quarter of 2013, smartphones accounted for more than half of phone makers' shipments worldwide. Samsung remained the top dog, but LG, Huawei, and ZTE all saw big gains.

LG returned to IDC's smartphone Top 5 in the first quarter of 2013 with record-high shipments, riding a strong interest in its LTE-enabled devices, including the Optimus G.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

It seemed inevitable, and now it has happened: for the first time ever, feature phones have taken a backseat to smartphones in terms of quantities shipped.

In the first quarter of 2013, device makers shipped 216.2 million smartphones worldwide, a volume that accounted for 51.6 percent of total global shipments and that marked the first time smartphones have claimed more than half of all quarterly shipments, according to market researcher IDC.

The smartphone market grew 41.6 percent compared with the first quarter of 2012, but declined 5.1 percent from the shipment tally for the fourth quarter of 2012. The first quarter of the year typically sees a slowdown, especially in comparison with the holiday-shopping-filled fourth quarter.

The first quarter saw a total of 418.6 million mobile phones -- both smartphones and the less-powerful feature phones -- shipped worldwide, IDC said Thursday.

"Phone users want computers in their pockets," IDC analyst Kevin Restivo said in a statement. "The days where phones are used primarily to make phone calls and send text messages are quickly fading away."

(Credit: IDC/Screenshot by CNET)

See more additional table and statistic about the whole mobile vendors

Apples' Cook in China (MediaTek Impact)

Apple is having hard time competing in emerging market due to MediaTek.

Apple CEO Cook Returns to China Amid Falling Market Share

The New York Times article below expands about MediaTek rise.

"Despite having reported record sales of the iPhone 5, the U.S. technology giant’s presence on the mainland flagged in 2012; it was pushed out of the top five smartphone makers in that market during the third quarter, with just 8 percent of the market, according to the research firm Canalys.

As Coolpad, Huawei, Lenovo, Samsung and ZTE surged ahead of Apple, a major force behind their success was MediaTek, a Taiwanese chip maker...entered the smartphone business late, introducing its first chipset in 2011 inside a Lenovo phone. But within a year and a half, analysts say, MediaTek has taken 50 percent of China’s market for smartphone chips.

That success has come with the adoption of what MediaTek calls a “turnkey solution.” Rather than simply provide a chip, the company also offers instructions on how to build a phone, the software architecture to run it and dedicated consultants to advise phone makers through the production process"

Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/

Providing a Template to Challenge Apple

By LIN YANG, January 6, 2013

TAIPEI — In the China smartphone market, Apple has seen better days.

Despite having reported record sales of the iPhone 5, the U.S. technology giant’s presence on the mainland flagged in 2012; it was pushed out of the top five smartphone makers in that market during the third quarter, with just 8 percent of the market, according to the research firm Canalys.

As Coolpad, Huawei, Lenovo, Samsung and ZTE surged ahead of Apple, a major force behind their success was MediaTek, a Taiwanese chip maker whose products have drastically reduced the cost for manufacturers of getting new phones to market.

The company entered the smartphone business late, introducing its first chipset in 2011 inside a Lenovo phone. But within a year and a half, analysts say, MediaTek has taken 50 percent of China’s market for smartphone chips.

That success has come with the adoption of what MediaTek calls a “turnkey solution.” Rather than simply provide a chip, the company also offers instructions on how to build a phone, the software architecture to run it and dedicated consultants to advise phone makers through the production process. MediaTek’s chief financial officer, David Ku, describes this as a franchise model in which all the clients have to do is “turn on the burner.”

Peter Liao, an analyst at Nomura Securities who covers the industry, said MediaTek saved phone makers the often prohibitive cost of research and development.

“It typically takes a lot of money and time to develop a new handset model, but MediaTek comes in and provides a total solution,” Mr. Liao said.

The company has proved wildly popular among Chinese phone makers. Besides supplying Huawei, Lenovo and ZTE, MediaTek also supports lesser-known manufacturers, including those that make so-called bandit phones that imitate premium models from Apple, Samsung and HTC.

TCL Communication Technology Holdings, a Chinese phone maker that sells phones primarily in Europe and Latin America, uses MediaTek’s chips. Its chief operating officer, Wang Jiyang, said that when his company works with MediaTek, its only major design tasks are to make the software more user-friendly and to tailor the look and feel of the phone.
“In general, with MediaTek’s help, we’re able to achieve almost twice as fast time to market, compared to other solutions,” Mr. Wang said.

MediaTek was founded in 1997. It started out making chips for home entertainment electronics like DVD players and televisions before moving into components for CD and DVD-ROM devices. In 2004, it began making chips for small mobile phones.
MediaTek estimates that it will lead the Chinese market by selling 110 million smartphone chips in 2012, up from 10 million chips a year ago.
By comparison, Qualcomm, the global leader in smartphone chips, is expected to finish 2012 in second place in China with 82 million chips shipped, according to the research firm DigiTimes.
MediaTek has been powered by consumers like Zhang Ying, 31, who want to try the latest technology but not pay a premium for it. Mr. Zhang, a Shanghai resident, bought a knockoff HTC phone last year. “Every person has a price point,” he said. “At a time when some of my friends were buying Samsung or iPhone, I wanted to show that I can keep up with them. A lot of domestic phones are cheap and of fairly good quality.”
People who think like Mr. Zhang are dominating sales, especially among first-time smartphone buyers. In a September report, McKinsey, the global consulting firm, estimated that 69 percent of all smartphones sold in China would cost less than 1,500 renminbi, or about $240, by the second half of 2013.
And MediaTek is taking its business model to other emerging markets. The company’s products support features that are popular in developing countries, like noise-reducing speakers and slots for two SIM cards.
In India, local brands like Spice and Micromax are rolling out lower-priced smartphone models using MediaTek parts. In Brazil, phones by Motorola Mobility, as well as local brands like Gradiente and Multilaser, will also have MediaTek chips.
“The markets we target have 5.8 billion people, whereas the U.S. and Europe have less than one billion,” said Mr. Ku of MediaTek. “I need to aim at a global market, not just developed countries.”

MediaTek also released a chip last year for building basic smartphones that work in regions without mobile data networks. Users of these phones rely on Wi-Fi connections to download multimedia. These phones can cost as little as $50, or 312 renminbi.

Those chips now account for 40 percent of MediaTek’s smartphone chip sales, according to the company.

Mark Hung, an analyst at the research firm Gartner, calls the network-less chip one of the “fastest-growing smartphone segments,” as many consumers are looking to switch from their simple mobile phones to basic, low-cost smartphones.

“This is a fairly new phenomenon, and as you can expect, mostly in emerging markets, including China,” Mr. Hung said.

For now, Apple has signaled that it has no intention of competing on price. The iPhone 5, released in China on Dec. 14, cost 300 renminbi more than the two previous models, the iPhone 4S and 4, on their release days. More than two million units of the iPhone 5 were sold during its first weekend.

By contrast, Coolpad, Huawei, Lenovo, Samsung and ZTE have rolled out new phones with similar performance at a third of the iPhone 5’s price of 5,288 renminbi, and sometimes less.

“We believe that emerging countries should also be able to enjoy the use of information technology with the same computing power,” said Tsai Ming-kai, chief executive of MediaTek.

As the world’s largest market for smartphones, China is quickly becoming a bellwether for the progress of sales wars globally. The Chinese experience may show that any leading market position can be fickle, and new brands can appear seemingly out of nowhere to capture significant market shares.

Apple remains No. 2 in smartphone shipments worldwide after Samsung, but its position could be threatened as the competition expands to more consumers and more price points.

“Emerging economies are getting stronger,” Mr. Tsai said. “The industry dynamic is always evolving. Anything can happen.”

Apple iPad 4 – A6X Tear-down

Chipwork's teardown of the new Apple iPad 4 reveals a major redesign of the graphic processor (GPU). The much larger area dedicated to the GPU and wider interface of the DRAM improves the display and touch screen performance of the iPad 4. It probably also helps prolong battery life.


" The A6 is 94mm2 while the A6X is 123mm2 – a full 30% larger.So where did that extra area go? Well, firstly, it did not go to the CPU core. The A6X uses the identical CPU to the A6. Same size, same layout. This is not surprising given that the prior CPU used custom layout techniques, and therefore it would be a huge amount of work to redesign so soon. Much of the extra area has gone to the GPU cores which are up from 3 to 4. More notable is that each of these GPU cores is much larger.On the A6X each GPU core is 8.7mm2 while the A6 GPU cores are only 5.4mm2. The overall area occupied by the A6X GPU cores is more than double that of the A6!

So we see that of the 29 mm2 of new area on the A6X, a full 18.6 mm2 is the result of the increased quantity of graphics processing. Impressive!

Additionally, if you look closely at the GPU cores (which our high magnification scopes allow us to do), we can see they are actually split into sub-cores themselves. Each GPU core is sub-divided into 9 sub-cores (2 sets of 4 identical sub-cores plus a central core). This could be done to allow for more efficient parallel processing, or to allow for a higher maximum clock rate. In either case, these GPUs should result in some blazing graphics on your iPad.

Other items of note:

It looks like the A6X has double the SDRAM interface width of the A6 (again likely to allow for greater graphics processing power).

Other than the CPU, it appears all the other digital cores have new layouts. This chip is not just a minor tweak from the A6, a lot of work has gone into this.

Apple has reduced the number of core PLLs needed from 9 on the A6 to 8 on the A6X. However they have moved them close to the middle of the chip which may allow for better control over clock skew across the chip.

Many of the analog and interface cores have been reused from the A6, however there are also some new interface blocks."

Additional information

Ron Maltiel   www.maltiel-consulting.com

Apple's A6X Processor 32nm Process Advantages

Apple's latest iPad 4 processor comes with its latest processor: an A6X, which Apple says delivers twice the CPU and graphics performance as the A5X. See below some details about Apple's A6X processor.

"Apple moved from a 45nm process to a more power-efficient 32nm process. Instead of keeping performance the same and decreasing the iPad's thickness and weight, Apple instead chose to double its performance without sacrificing all-day battery life."

More about Apple's optimizing process and design at iPhone A6 Teardown Update

Ron
http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/






Deducing details about Apple's A6X processor


Apple promises double the CPU and graphics performance over the A5X, but how?

by Chris Foresman - Oct 23 2012, 3:25pm PDT


As usual, Apple didn't share many specifics about its new A6 "Extreme" (A6X) processor, which powers the fourth-generation iPad. However, by looking at Apple's claims that it's "twice as fast" as the A5X-powered third-gen iPad, it may be possible to deduce what's inside.

According to Apple, the A6X processor "delivers up to twice the CPU and graphics performance of the A5X chip." In other words, the dual-core CPU can process data twice as fast as the dual-core 1GHz, Cortex A9-based A5X. It can also churn through OpenGL triangles and textures at twice the rate of the PowerVR SGX543MP4 in the A5X. So how did Apple do that?

Looking at CPU power for the moment, we already know that Apple designed a custom ARM-based core for the A6. Running at 1.2GHz in the iPhone 5, two A6 cores run twice as fast as two 800MHz A5 cores in an iPhone 4S.

However, the A5X in the third-gen iPad was clocked at 1GHz. That means Apple is clocking the A6X higher yet. Given that architectural improvements account for some of the speed increase, Apple only had to clock the iPhone 5 at 150 percent to achieve double the compute performance of the iPhone 4S. With this in mind, we believe Apple is clocking the A6X's CPU cores at 1.5GHz.

Examining the GPU is slightly different. Apple already jammed four SGX543 GPU cores into the A5X in order to achieve performance parity with the two SGX543 GPU cores in the A5 chip that powers the iPad 2. The extra GPUs were needed just to keep up with the 2048×1532 pixel Retina display, so these did not offer any graphics performance improvement. However, Apple says that the A6X pumps pixels twice as fast.

Apple could be using a newer-generation PowerVR core, but that appears to be very unlikely. Only one announced processor is known to use a PowerVR Series6 design, and it won't even begin sampling until 2013. Given that Apple just released the A6 a month ago, we're confident Apple is still using the same SGX543 core.

Here's what we know about the PowerVR SGX543 core's performance: it scales almost linearly with the number of cores and clock speed. So to double the performance, Apple would either have to double the number of cores to eight or double the clock speed of each of the four cores. Apple says that the A6X has "quad-core graphics"—the same as the A5X—so Apple clearly boosted the clock speed. Since the GPUs in the A5X were clocked at 250MHz, we believe that Apple has clocked the SGX543 cores at 500MHz.

Given the significant boosts in clock frequency—150 percent for the CPU cores, and 200 percent for the GPU cores—you may be wondering how Apple can still promise a 10-hour battery life. After all, the iPad still has the exact same 42.5Whr battery, but the processor is twice as powerful. The power savings come from the same place as we saw in the iPhone—Apple moved from a 45nm process to a more power-efficient 32nm process. Instead of keeping performance the same and decreasing the iPad's thickness and weight, Apple instead chose to double its performance without sacrificing all-day battery life.

Of course, we won't know how accurate our educated guesses are until one of the new iPads can be thoroughly benched, and the A6X's architecture is analyzed by the likes of Chipworks. However, we feel confident suggesting Apple has mated two A6 ARM cores running at 1.5GHz with four PowerVR SGX543 cores running at 500MHz. Given the performance results we saw with the iPhone 5, we expect the updated iPad will remain at the top of the tablet performance heap for some time.