[bigyabai]

It's hard to get a solid grasp on what Apple pays for ARM, since their licensing is all conducted behind closed doors. It's worth noting that ARM (the ISA technology) is owned by SoftBank, a holding firm which Apple has invested in quite heavily. Some reports claim that they pay as little as $0.30 a chip: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-pays-arm-less-than-3...

x86 licensing costs are complicated. The basic old 16-bit architecture is very well-documented, and while it's proprietary it's still implemented in hundreds of products and clones. Modern 32-bit and 64-bit implementations have a lot more ISA extensions that would be costly to license and hard to develop on your own. As a result, modern x86 designs can really only be made by licensing Intel or AMD technology.