Samsung showing some muscle - Apple accepted a 20% increase in chip prices

South Korean media reported that Samsung has raised the price of chips for iOS devices by 20%. According to them, Apple reportedly wanted to immediately suspend cooperation with Samsung but unfortunately Apple did not found suitable manufacturer.

Samsung Electronics recently asked Apple CPU serious price hike. Apple at first resisted, but after failing to find a replacement, accept the price increase, "says the South Korean Chosun Ilbo.

Last year, Samsung has produced a total of 130 million chips for Apple, and for 2012 the figure will move slightly more than 200 million copies. Samsung has a contract to produce chips for Apple by the end of 2014.

Apple's problem is to find a suitable manufacturer, which would offer a lower price, but also a manufacturer that could scale to meet their demand. For now in negotiations to produce chips with Taiwanese companies TSMC and Kinsus.

One of the reasons for the price increase is that the production of chips Apple is currently taking a serious part of Samsung's capacity. With the price increase, they hope Apple will over time reduce orders, after which Samsung could start more to produce for themselves.

Trying to reduce dependence, Apple has terminated contracts with Samsung for the production of RAM and flash memory on their devices, and more recently production of LCD screens was split between several manufacturers (LG and Sharp).

Source