Apple Reportedly Mass Producing Up To 100 Million A18 Chipset Units, As It Anticipates High Demand For The iPhone 16 Series Due To Generative AI & Other Upgrades

The iPhone 16 lineup is expected to launch in September. Apart from the usual display, camera, and other hardware upgrades, generative AI features will likely be a part of the announcements, with Apple Intelligence playing a paramount role in all of this. In short, the upcoming models are anticipated to be in high demand, which is why Apple is reportedly mass producing up to 100 million A18 chipsets, which will be powering the four handsets.

A18, A18 Pro will debut later this year, with Apple probably introducing some specification differences to help propel the stock of its iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max

Despite notable analysts such as Ming-Chi Kuo predicting that the iPhone 16 family will lack compelling features, resulting in a shipment decline, China Times reports that Apple’s estimated sales for the newest lineup for this year are between 90 million to 100 million units. This effectively means that the technology giant’s foundry partner, TSMC, would supply up to 100 million A18 units to the company, but before you forget, we must remind readers that the company has two chipsets getting unveiled later this year. The A18 is expected to be found in the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus.

As for the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, Apple’s top-end models will probably get treated to the A18 Pro, which could deliver slightly better performance than the base version. Like the M4 powering the newest 11-inch and 13-inch OLED iPad Pro models, Apple could leverage TSMC’s 3nm ‘N3E’ process to bring even better power efficiency and performance to the tablet compared to the ‘N3B’ node. An earlier rumor claimed that the A18 would feature a more powerful Neural Engine than the M4’s unit, resulting in improved generative AI capabilities.

Perhaps the only hardware aspect holding back the iPhone 16 series would be the lack of RAM, as all four models will reportedly be treated to 8GB, which is an insufficient amount when running generative AI features completely on-device. Both the A18 and A18 Pro could also feature bigger die sizes to accommodate for an upgraded Neural Engine and increased cache, but the 6-core GPU configuration could remain unchanged from the A17 Pro, possibly limiting graphical performance.

The report does not mention which iPhone 16 model has been ordered in higher volume, but we expect to witness the breakdown in the coming months while also analyzing what the A18 series is capable of, so stay tuned for more updates.

News Source: China Times