In a moved aimed at tightening control over its products, customers and software developers, Apple has announced that its terminating its 15-year long partnership with leading chip maker Intel, The Wall Street Journal reported.
"Today we are announcing our transition to Apple Silicon, making this a historic day for the Mac," Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the firm’s first ever virtual-only World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC).
“At Apple, integrating hardware and software is fundamental to everything we do,” Cook said. “That’s what makes our products so great, and silicon is at the heart of our hardware.”
Apple will begin jettisoning Intel processors from its Macs later this year and officially transition to its in-house Silicon chips designed by the tech behemoth’s silicon engineers. The transition will be complete in two years.
Ever since 2005 when the company founder Steve Jobs announced a partnership with Intel , Apple has been using Intel chips to power its computers and Macs. However, it has been building its A-Series arm-based processors for iPhones and iPads.
During the transition period, Apple will continue to support and release new versions of macOS(macOperating System) for its Intel-based Macs and work towards establishing a common architecture across all Apple products.
Once the transition is fully complete, Intel is estimated to lose a significant portion of its revenue from Apple, which analysts estimate at roughly $3 billion a year. However Apple will continue to remain an Intel customer, using the chip-maker’s technology to power servers that handle its cloud-computing services,