Rumors regarding the future plans of Apple continue to flood the Internet and here is a more recent one. The Nikkei Asian Review website published a report, which says that Apple could choose Intel over ARM as the chipmaker and develop iPhone chips set to launch in 2018. If true, this news could be a major blow to TSMC and Samsung, which have held the contract for manufacturing iPhone chips for a long time.

Over the past decade, the world’s largest contract chipmaker company, TSMC has gained immensely from its partnership with ARM from the start of the smartphones market. Intel’s new alliance with Apple could result in fierce competition for TSMC as early as 2018.

In addition, the above report notes that Intel has a big advantage over Samsung and TSMC, because Apple has been repeatedly pressed to work with companies that are based in the US, and not in Asia. In addition, we must add that the Cupertino firm always believes in diversifying its supply chain, and to avoid depending on a single supplier, so possibly the arrival of an agreement with Intel does not sound entirely far-fetched.

Intel refused to build the first iPhone chips

Last May during his farewell speech as CEO of Intel , Paul Otellini revealed that the company refused to build the chip for the original iPhone because they considered, according to his calculations, it was not profitable for them back then, thus losing out on closing a mega deal.

Though Intel still dominates the personal computer market, it has been struggling in the mobile era ever since. Possibly this opportunity and good relations established between the two companies, may finally get Intel busy building Apple iPhone chips in the future and end monopoly of the smartphone chip maker, ARM.

For now it’s just a rumor, so we’ll have to wait a bit to see if the Cupertino firm reveals something of the alleged agreement during its upcoming September event.