Apple plans to use first-gen 3nm chips in iPhone 16 in 2024

Apple plans to use TSMC's 3-nanometer chips on the iPhone 16 series in 2024, and the lower-priced iPhone 16 models may use the first-generation 3-nanometer chips in 2024.

The news comes from a report from Morgan Stanley published by the "Economic Daily", in which it talked about TSMC's 3-nanometer expansion plan. TSMC, the chip wafer maker, plans to reduce its production capacity at its cutting-edge nodes from 80,000 wafers per month to 60,000, the report said. Most of that will be used by Apple in its 2024 iPhone chips.

That's because TSMC has several different kinds of 3nm processes in place for customers like Apple, and each iteration is better than the previous one. Assuming the company's plans to launch four new iPhones remain unaffected, the lower-priced iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus will likely use mass-produced SoCs using the first-generation 3-nanometer process, while the "Pro" series may jump to more power-efficient of the second generation process.

Apple is rumored to use TSMC's second-generation 3nm process to mass-produce the M3 and A17 Bionic chips, which are expected to launch next year, but Apple may keep the new manufacturing process for the A18 Bionic until 2024. Of course, it all depends on whether TSMC can continue to produce a sufficient number of wafers per month without encountering production hurdles, as customers like Qualcomm and MediaTek also want to use the technology for their own mobile chips.