AFTER 15 YEARS, APPLE SET TO BREAK UP WITH INTEL

Apple has been working for years on designing chips to replace the Intel microprocessors used in Mac computers, according to five people with knowledge of the effort, who weren’t authorised to speak about it. They say Apple could announce its plans as soon as a company conference for developers Monday, with computers based on the new chips arriving next year.

Apple’s move is an indication of the growing power of the biggest tech companies to expand their abilities and reduce their dependence on major partners that have provided them with services for years — even as smaller competitors and the global economy struggle because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Facebook, for example, is investing billions of dollars into one of Indonesia’s fastestgrowing apps, a telecom giant in India and an undersea fibreoptic cable around Africa. Amazon has built out its own fleet of cargo planes and delivery trucks. And Google and Apple continue to buy upstarts to expand their empires.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the partner Apple uses to build similar components it designs for iphones and ipads, is expected to make the Mac chips in factories in Asia — an arrangement much like Apple’s use of Foxconn to assemble iphones.

Intel and Apple declined to comment. Bloomberg previously reported on Apple’s plans. Other big tech companies like Amazon and Google already design some of their own chips, both for performance and potential cost reasons. Some tasks, like artificial intelligence and the rendering of 3-D images, can be handled more efficiently on special-purpose circuitry rather than the general-purpose microprocessors that are Intel’s mainstay.