Apple Now World's Largest Semiconductor Buyer

Lucas123 writes "Apple has leaped two spots to become the world's largest consumer of semiconductor technology, including NAND flash, NOR flash and microprocessors. Apple spent $17.5 billion on semiconductors in 2010, an increase of 79.6% over 2009. Sixty-one percent of Apple's semiconductor budget in 2010 was spent on wireless products such as the iPhone and iPad, while second place HP spent 82% of its semiconductor budget on computer products like desktops, notebooks and servers."

surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

it is surprising how hard it is for slashdot posters to click one link further to the real article instead of linking to the one with adds.

http://www.isuppli.com/Semiconductor-Value-Chain/News/Pages/Apple-Becomes-Worlds-Largest-OEM-Semiconductor-Buyer-in-2010.aspx

Re:And?

[hedwards]

Apple manufacturers very little themselves, they contract out to folks like Foxconn for the actual manufacturing. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with contracting out the actual manufacturing, I just think that it's important to keep in mind that the contractors hardly work just for Apple.

Re:And?

[NatasRevol]

You're comparing wrong.

Apple is larger than HP, Dell, Acer, Asus, HTC, RIM, etc. And not by just a little bit either.

Think how many laptops/desktops/servers/soon-to-be-tablets HP sells worldwide. Apple is bigger than that, by a lot.
Think how many phone models/tablet models HTC sells. Apple is bigger than that, by a lot.

Re:Never has consumer savviness sounded so stupid.

[Kjella]

Stupid PC buyers... buying according to their needs and monetary abilities. Why can't they learn that it is much better to be "committed".
(...)
While Apple rocks.

Funny that, since Apple is the IBM of cell phones while Android is the Microsoft. If you invest heavily in Android apps, you can switch between any number of clones. If you invest in iApps, you're committed to Apple hardware which comes with a heavy premium.

Don't get me wrong, I have an iPhone myself because it has features ahead of its time - but so did OS/2. But unless they keep moving they'll end up just like IBM did, overrun by cheap clones doing pretty much the same at a much lower cost.

Re:SAMSUNG

[Karlt1]

Meanwhile, Apple is in the middle of a giant lawsuit against Samsung for it's mobile phone division, which is starting to seriously make a run for crown of the Android market, and is eating away at Apple's business.

Apple:

1. Generates more revenue than any other company in the world selling cell phones (yes they generate more revenue than Nokia)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20056289-248.html [cnet.com]

2. Has 50% of the worldwide profit in cell phones compared to 13% for all Android manufacturers combined:

http://www.asymco.com/2011/05/16/iphone-share-of-phone-market-in-q1/ [asymco.com]

3. The iOS app market is more than 17x bigger than Android's by revenue:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/861-5-percent-growth-android-puny/ [techcrunch.com]

Android from a business perspective isn't really doing that great.....