Apple Orders 30-40 Million S1 Chips for Apple Watch
Apple's own smartwatch offering, the Apple Watch, isn't slated for a release till early 2015 but there are already reports that an Apple chip supplier is already ramping up production of component parts. By the quantity of the orders, it looks like Apple is expecting some 30 million to 40 million Apple Watch units to come into production later this year.
By those numbers, it seems Apple is looking to sell a huge number of Apple Watches once it comes out into the market. 40 million units might sound a bit farfetched but Samsung sold 800,000 units of its Galaxy Gear wearables in the two months it was out. Considering the popularity of the Apple branding, one million or two wouldn't be much of a problem for the Cupertino company.
As for the chip itself, Apple is looking to use an advanced system-in-package (SiP) technology for its wearables. The chip is unlike Apple's A-series chip where it is to include the entire computing system on the single chip. The technology has been dubbed "S1" and is a custom-designed chip which compresses and stacks multiple subsystems into a small space, just enough to fit on the Apple Watch.
There's not much details about the S1 chip but Apple has flaunted the technology as a first in the industry. During the wearable's reveal earlier September this year, Apple had mentioned that the S1 chip will be protected by resin.
The Apple Watch is also to sport a Force Touch Retina display which is to enable the device to differentiate between taps and presses. As for its release, rumors place the date at Feb. 14.
