Apart from straight up buying TSMC's or Samsung's fabs I don't see a way of building a vertically integrated high-end chip supply chain for Apple. At least not on timeframes measured below a decade. And on those time frames the current supply issues will probably be resolved by companies who put all their effort into it instead of just tweaking their bottom line.

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alt227 8 hours ago | parent [-]

TBH Im surprised they havent already bought one of these companies.

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ecshafer 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There is zero chance Taiwan or South Korea would allow this. It would be blocked on National Security grounds for each respective company/country.

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jacquesm 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It might actually serve as an insurance policy of sorts.

	▲	nxobject an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I actually see the logic there: Apple as a “harmless consumer device company” is probably one will remain very geographically diversified in the long run, between the China and America markets. (Interestingly enough, I think PRC and ROC are combined in public financials.)
	▲	lostmsu 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Does not seem to be helping AWS data centers in Middle East.

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reachableceo an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why would they want that on their balance sheet?

Also they have the ability to put in sufficiently large amount purchase orders to buy up whatever capacity they want.

Even at ludicrous markup prices from TSMC, ifs going to be orders of magnitude cheaper than in house a fab.

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bel8 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think they would be able to buy any of these. It would have been blocked by multiple regulators.

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macintux 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They've had a great deal of success playing them off against each other.

	▲	8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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r_lee 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

because their entire thing is to focus on a few product lines... I'm not surprised at all