Apple Freezes Plans to Use China’s YMTC Chips – Strategy

U.S. tech giant Apple put on hold plans to use memory chips from China’s Yangtze River Memory Technology (YMTC) in its products after Washington imposed tougher export controls on Chinese tech firms, Nikkei said. reported on Monday.

Apple had originally planned to start using state-owned YMTC’s NAND flash memory chips as early as this year, Nikkei said, citing a person familiar with the matter. The chip was originally intended to be used only in iPhones sold in the Chinese market.

The company is ultimately considering buying up to 40% of the chips needed for every iPhone from the YMTC, the paper said.

Analysts believe YMTC is one of the smaller companies supplying memory chips to Apple and the move will have little to no impact.

But the bigger impact, said CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino, is that Apple could leverage domestic Chinese firms to improve its cost profile over time, further diversifying its supplier base. It is said that it is necessary to limit the

Apple is moving mass production to Vietnam and India to make products like Airpods and new iPhones.

Last week, the United States added China’s top memory chip maker YMTC and 30 other Chinese companies to a list of companies that U.S. officials could not inspect.

The Biden administration’s export controls on China slow Beijing’s technological and military progress by cutting off China’s supply of certain semiconductor chips manufactured elsewhere in the world with U.S. equipment. It’s for

Apple did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment, but the YMTC declined to comment.