[cromwellian]

I'm not dismissing it, but to ignore the fact that the iPhone is wholly dependent on tons of innovation in their supply chain is a problem. No matter how fancy your transistor layout gets, if, starting tomorrow, there were no more process node shrinks, and no more innovation in other ares of silicon (e.g. low-k/high-k), the mobile revolution would be effectively frozen in place.

Phones would have no choice but to get bigger to get more powerful or to get longer battery life and perf/watt would hit a wall.

Point being, Apple spends a disproportionately small sum on R&D relative to the size of their earnings and they don't seem to be funding basic research at all like large corporations of the past, e.g. IBM, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, etc.

With the government cutting funds for basic research, we need corporations who are sitting on $4 trillion in cash, to pick up the slack.