[giantrobot]

> How can you call them the number one chip maker when they don't compete in any of those markets,

Because they produce north of 300 million SoCs every year. They may not end up the number one chipmaker every single year but they're in the top ten and depending on other companies' demand vs Apple's demand may end up number one.

[Aromasin]

If we're talking about manufacturing volume as the sole definition for "number one chip maker", then the idea that Apple might be first is frankly laughable. If we discounted pure foundries (TSMC, UMC, Global Foundries) they'd struggle to scrape top 5 at the best of times. Intel, Samsung, Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD and the like work in the range of billions, or near enough. Currently Intel has 76.7% of the laptop chip market share alone; that's before you start considering their server, edge, and network markets. If we start including trailing edge chips, from the likes of Texas Instruments, Micron, Broadcom, etcetera, then Apple would be a small drop in the pond. Even if Apple ate up the entire consumer market, they'd still struggle to compete with the rest of the industry on volume.

I don't think people appreciate the obscene number of leading edge chips that go into the industrial sectors. I've seen more chips go into a single Industry 4.0 factory than I have to an entire states Micro Center inventory.