In what would come as the second major shock to all those chipmakers who are currently in contract with Apple, noted financial analyst Bankhaus Lampe is arguing that Apple might soon ditch UK based chipmaker Dialog (via Reuters), the company that makes battery saver chips for Apple’s iPhones.
In the same context, Bankhaus Lampe has degraded Dialog’s share rating from “hold” to a “sell”, thus resulting in the company’ shares nose-diving by 14%, to close at €40.92. And while this “14%” might already seem a bit too much to you, the shares went down by as much as 36% as the news broke out, only to later find some feet and recover.
Dialog said in a statement, that it saw no business reason for the share drop and that it remained comfortable with its financial outlook for “good revenue growth” in 2017. The company said,
The company notes the level of visibility into the design cycle of its leading customers remains unchanged and the business relationships are in line with the normal course of business.
Apple — according to various analyst estimates — accounts for a whopping 70% of Dialog’s overall sales. The stat once again brings to light, as to how overly dependent third-party suppliers of Apple are, on the company for their sales and henceforth revenues.
Dialog on its end, has claimed of a 20% market share, making it the largest manufacturer of such chipsets.
Bankhaus Lampe has cited unnamed sources for its report, saying that Apple is reportedly working on two power management design centers, both in Munich and California. In fact, the source further goes on to say that the company is “poaching” engineers from Dialog and already has a team of over 80 people working on a power management chip of its own.
Third party chip suppliers for Apple have come recently into spotlight as confirmed news came in that the Cupertino giant will be leaving Imagination Technologies to design and manufacture its own graphics chipsets. According to Imagination Technology’s blog post, Apple had informed the company that it’ll no longer be employing their intellectual property (graphics design patents) in its upcoming new products. The Cupertino giant has been using Imagination Technology’s GPU technology in most of their products ranging from phones, iPods, and tablets to TVs and watches.
