Monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service.

The fact they got more money than competitors and leverage that to get exclusive control doesn't matter much. Textbook definition of a monopoly. On legal side, IANAL, no idea if this could be illegal somewhere.

Apple doesn’t have exclusive control over 3nm process

They will just get the first chips — maybe for the first year of production, idk

Yeah, this is what people said about 5nm too. Guess what? You can't even buy the 5nm node today because Apple still buys up the majority of it, and the few other competitors like Nvidia and AMD fight like animals for the scraps.

Whatever you want to call it, it's pretty anticompetitive. Seeing them do the same thing for 3nm doesn't inspire confidence that they're going to do the right thing this time around.

Apple doesn't have exclusive control

Except for the first year where they take a headstart where nobody else can either have matching chips or figure out what issues come out of this process, making them get an even bigger advantage as they have stabilized their process on year 2 when everyone is barely building up.

Don't be a clown. You know fully well what Apple is doing.

if one were to make the argument of exclusivity, TSMC is the right example, not apple. As much as i dislike apple's practices, they are paying what they can afford.

If other fabs were available, apple's ability to pay up would not be leading to accusations of anti-competitive behaviour.

>If other fabs were available, apple's ability to pay up would not be leading to accusations of anti-competitive behaviour.

If I ignore reality and make up non-existent fabs, the extremely monopolistic, anti-competitive behaviour is not a problem!

>they are paying what they can afford.

The problem is not paying what they can afford, it's paying that in addition to forbidding TSMC from increasing their capacity on that node while the contract is ongoing. It's both paying what they can afford, and paying so that others can't afford it.

Do they forbid adding capacity? I thought they basically finance the capacity in trade for the right to do first bid on any capacity for a certain timeframe. And they have the margins to just pay more than any competitor. AND they are also supply constraint. Ie it’s not that they buy stuff and then _not_ use it (on the contrary they are well known for carrying nearly no inventory)

If some other company is willing (or really: able) to make a competing offer, I’m not aware of TSMC not being interested in that. It just happens that the number of companies with the margins to spend what probably amounts to the GDP of a small nation is approximately zero (or one if you count Apple)

> The problem is not paying what they can afford, it's paying that in addition to forbidding TSMC from increasing their capacity on that node while the contract is ongoing. It's both paying what they can afford, and paying so that others can't afford it.

Except they didn't have exclusive access? Huawei also bought 5nm. Intel contracted 3nm along with apple before backing out.

>> it's paying that in addition to forbidding TSMC from increasing their capacity on that node while the contract is ongoing

Is there any proof that this is actually true? TSMC is currently building few new factories, I suppose they will produce 3nm chip in them.

>The problem is not paying what they can afford, it's paying that in addition to forbidding TSMC from increasing their capacity on that node while the contract is ongoing.

I am sorry but that is simply not true. Sigh.

Another company would be free to hand TSMC money to build capacity. The Android market for cell phones is much larger than the iPhone market.

> Monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service.

Except that Apple don’t supply or trade in chips. If they were buying up chips and hoarding them it might be considered a monopoly.

I think you'd find it rude and, ultimately, unacceptable if a competitor with 1000x as much cash as you bought all of the raw materials that your business needs at a mark-up, leaving you completely unable to deliver any product whatsoever. That's rightly the kind of abuse of market position that is regulated by anti-trust laws.

I think this is perfectly fine, and AFAIK is not regulated unless the competitor literally dumps the chips.

Except this is not what is happening. They are paying to buy all the "Top quality" A grade materials, the competitors has plenty of choice to buy B grade materials.

The seller of Top Quality Material are in no position to sell their A grade material to all buyers.

Try starting any hardware company and see how far you get - even if you don’t need cutting edge hardware.