Samsung's deal with Apple makes sure iPhone production doesn't halt

Apple sources memory chips for the iPhone 17 series phones from three companies, Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix, with the first and third being the major suppliers for various reasons. However, as the two firms are no longer able to supply the required quantity of memory chips, the iPhone-maker has selected the South Korean tech giant as the lead supplier. In fact, Apple has realised that without Samsung’s help, it may not be able to make enough iPhone 17 and iPhone 18 units.

Recently, there has been a sharp rise in the demand for AI tools, such as Gemini and ChatGPT. These tools run on AI accelerators, which require a large amount of high-bandwidth memory (HBM). As a result, the demand for HBM has also gone up sharply. Higher demand translates to higher prices and profit. With that, Micron and SK Hynix are focusing more on supplying HBM rather than LPDDR5X, which the iPhone 17 uses, failing to supply Apple with enough memory chips.

Samsung, despite supplying HBM chips to brands like Nvidia, has the capability to make Apple’s required quantity of LPDDR5X chips for the iPhone 17 series. As such, Apple is buying more memory modules from Samsung for the iPhone 17 series than from Micron and SK Hynix. With that, Samsung has become Apple’s lead iPhone 17 memory supplier (via Hankyung). Reportedly, Apple has also requested Samsung for a large quantity of memory chips for the upcoming iPhone 18 series.

The report says that Samsung is the world’s only company that can make memory chips meeting Apple’s quality requirements, which are more stringent than those set by JEDEC, and supply those chips for 230 million iPhones. As the demand for memory is going up, the prices of memory chips are rising significantly. With that and Apple ordering more memory chips, Samsung’s revenue may increase significantly, and so will its profits, proving 2026 to be a great year for the brand.