AMD, Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm and many other tech companies source the chips that drive their high-end devices from one manufacturer: TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. And if a new report proves true, TSMC is going to be charging them a lot more for the privilege.
That's according to a China Times article citing supply chain sources which appears to suggest (via machine translation) that TSMC is prepared to start delivering chips fabricated on a 2-nanometer process as early as next year.
TSMC currently fabricates chips on an advanced 3-nanometer process, so everything from the Apple M4 chip inside your MacBook Air M4 to the The first 2nm TSMC chips are expected to debut in AI systems, but by the end of 2026 the China Times reports we should see 2nm chips showing up in smartphones from the likes of Apple and Samsung.
We'd already heard believable reports that next year's iPhone 18 will use a 2nm chip, so it's not exactly news that TSMC will be producing them at scale next year. What is new, however, is the report that the new 2nm chips will cost over 50% more than the current 3nm chips do to produce.
That's significant for everyone because if it proves true, then tech companies are soon going to be facing the hard choice of how much of the increased cost of these next-gen 2nm chips to pass on to the customer.
Bottom line
Between the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump's tariff policies, the market for gadgets and gear has been pretty volatile for the last five years. And with prices showing no signs of dropping anytime soon, it's an especially painful time to contemplate having to pay more for the best phones, tablets and laptops.
But I think we have some room to breathe. First and foremost, we don't know how accurate this China Times report is or whether prices on gadgets packing the latest 2nm chips will really climb so high.
Second, I think we're going to see these 2nm chips debut in phones before they arrive in laptops or PC components. Because while Apple's iPhone 17 and MacBook Air M4 both sport Apple silicon fabricated using TSMC's 3nm process, the latest Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs and Qualcomm Snapdragon X CPUs are still fabricated on older, larger 4nm and 5nm processes.
So while I expect Apple and Samsung to be among the first clients to start shipping products packing TSMC's 2nm chips, I have a hard time imagining AMD or Nvidia rushing to ship similar products. Prices will still go up year-over-year, to be sure, but I don't think we have to worry about GPU or CPU prices climbing precipitously in the immediate future.
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