Fruity cargo cult Apple has been told by its long-term partner TSMC that it will have to join the riff-raff in the queue for 2nm.
Apple is expected to lose its top spot as TSMC’s biggest customer, even after reportedly locking up more than half of the foundry’s initial 2nm capacity.
Most of those wafers are said to be earmarked for the A20 and A20 Pro, destined for the iPhone 18 range. With the AI boom shifting the revenue crown elsewhere, Job’s Mob is no longer the highest earner, and that means less VIP treatment.
The tag-team dynamic between Job’s Mob and TSMC has long been treated as preferential, with the iPhone maker historically hauling in a chunky share of the fab’s income.
At one point, Apple considered itself so important that there were rumours that it would only have to pay for the “good wafer batches. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has pushed back on that rumour, saying TSMC never ate the cost of defective wafers.
Still, the priority lane may be getting ripped up this year. Reports say the California giant delivered 24 per cent of TSMC’s annual revenue in 2024, before Nvidia grabbed the title in 2025.
Weibo tipster Fixed-focus digital cameras says TSMC, CEO C.C. Wei turned up at Job’s Mob’s HQ with a demand for the “largest price increase in recent years.” That lines up neatly with talk of tight 2nm supply and customers piling on for advanced nodes.
TSMC is said to be hiking prices for leading-edge processes for four consecutive years starting in 2026, as demand keeps squeezing capacity. Job’s Mob’s A20 is tipped to cost $280 per unit, which looks like the bill is already landing.
The 2nm node is also rumoured to have racked up 1.5 times as many tape-outs as 3nm, with Qualcomm and MediaTek in the mix too. Fixed-focus digital cameras add that Nvidia now accounts for 13 per cent of TSMC’s total revenue, while capital expenditure driven by AI is tipped to hit $52 billion to $56 billion this year.
