From PC World: It appears that Apple is developing its own power management chips, according to a report from German private bank Bankhaus Lampe. The release of the report Tuesday led to a sharp drop in the shares of Dialog Semiconductor, the current supplier of these chips to the iPhone maker.
“The teams of both companies collaborate very closely and thus, Dialog cannot be replaced by a third-party supplier. However, Apple itself could replace Dialog,” wrote analyst Karsten Iltgen.
As evidence, the report cited 16 different job openings on Apple’s website for analog/power management engineers for the design center in Munich alone.
“A search on social networks such as LinkedIn revealed that Apple has already poached about 20 chip designers, some of them with long-standing experience, from Dialog,” said the report, which estimates that about 40 power-management chip engineers are currently working at the design center in Munich, with a similar number working in the area at the center in California.
Industry sources in Taiwan suggest that manufacturing of samples of a power management integrated circuit for Apple is already underway, Iltgen wrote. “The timetable seems to point to a potential application of the chips in the iPhone as of 2019,” the report said.
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