[One Thousand Characters a Day] Apple Nvidia Shockwave <1>

Editor's NoteThis week's Asia Economy ＜One Thousand Characters a Day＞ transcription content is excerpted from Baek Jong-min, a reporter at Asia Economy's book ＜Apple Nvidia Shockwave＞. This book covers the upheaval caused by Apple and Nvidia entering the semiconductor market and the formation of a new semiconductor order. It analyzes the semiconductor market trends and forecasts the future through big tech companies competing with Apple, including Nvidia, TSMC, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung, Google, and Tesla. It especially reveals the secret to Nvidia's success, which is rapidly rising as an AI semiconductor and aiming for the No. 1 spot in U.S. market capitalization. The selected parts are easy enough for readers without specialized knowledge of the semiconductor industry to understand. Word count: 1023.

How many people nowadays buy Apple products because of their design? Choosing Apple to look different from others is a thing of the past. Now, many consumers evaluate Apple products as superior because of their performance. Although software has become similar as Apple’s iOS and Android have grown alike, why has the iPhone’s performance become stronger while Android smartphones have failed to catch up? And why has the sales of the Galaxy S, which had been trailing the iPhone for nearly a decade, recently turned upward again?

The answer is semiconductors. When Apple’s A-series chips, designed in-house for the iPhone, showed far superior performance compared to chips from Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, and others used in Android smartphones, consumers returned to the iPhone. The M-series chips introduced in 2020 publicly announced the end of Intel’s CPU dominance.

Since 2010, Apple’s evolution has gone hand in hand with changes in semiconductors. The semiconductors designed by Apple itself are now used in most Apple products. Apple, although late compared to Samsung in semiconductor design, has developed the Apple ecosystem by controlling both hardware and software. This was the result of understanding what the focal point of the ecosystem is.

Apple, which created the concept of the PC, realized the importance of semiconductors early on. The fact that ARM, now at the pinnacle of semiconductor design, was born out of Apple’s needs shows that Apple’s transformation was not a sudden decision but the result of decades of preparation. Steve Jobs created the 21st century hits iPhone, iPad, and iPod, but through the semiconductors he left behind, he laid the cornerstone of the Apple kingdom.

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After 2000, Apple, which had been a behind-the-scenes power in semiconductors, has now become a core player in future semiconductors. The 'dark horse' Nvidia, having overcome several crises since its founding, has persistently focused solely on GPU (graphics processing unit) semiconductors, seized opportunities, and ridden the tiger’s back. In the era of the ChatGPT revolution, Nvidia has emerged as the most dominant company and is considered the only company with the potential to compete with or even surpass Apple.

－Baek Jong-min, ＜Apple Nvidia Shockwave＞, Sejong Books, 23,000 KRW