Apple A-series and M-series Chip Revenue soars 54% in quarter one

Apple’s in-house A-series and M-series chip shipments and revenue saw solid double-digit unit and revenue growth in the first quarter of 2021, according to Strategy Analytics‘ “Handset Component Technologies (HCT)” service report.

Revenue jumps 54% to $2 billion

The research group says Apple’s revenue from A-series and M-series applications processors jumped 54% to US$2 billion in the first quarter of 2021. Strategy Analytics estimates that cumulatively Apple shipped $51. billion worth of A-series and M-series APs through the end of quarter one 2021.

“Apple believes in controlling the primary technologies used in its devices,” Sravan Kundojjala, author of the report and Associate Director of Handset Component Technologies service at Strategy Analytics, said. “Staying true to this, the company designs its semiconductor components, including apps processors, 5G basebands (Intel acquisition), GPUs, flash memory controllers, power management ICs, Bluetooth LE ICs, fingerprint sensors and depth-sensing sensors.”

Looking ahead

He adds that Apple is likely to integrate 5G modem technology into its A-series processors in the future. Since first introducing the A-series processor in 2010, Apple has shipped over 2.8 billion A-series APs cumulatively by the end of quarter one 2021. 

“Apple’s iPhone, iPad and Mac devices offer a significant scale to its in-house semiconductor investments,” Kundojala added. “Apple beat the semiconductor industry to market with the first 64-bit Arm mobile processor and became the lead customer to TSMC in advanced semiconductor process technologies such as 7 nm and 5 nm.”

iPhones continued to represent the majority of Apple’s processor revenue and accounted for 64% of total Apple’s total processor revenue in the first quarter 2021. The Apple Silicon M1 Arm-based processor, used in Macs and iPads, replaced Intel’s Core microprocessors and reignited mobile computing wars. 

“We estimate that the Apple Silicon M1 processor accounted for over 13 % of Apple’s total processor revenue in quarter one of 2021.”