Why Apple's iPhone 14 Won't Have an Upgraded Chip

For the first time since Apple, Inc. AAPL began designing in-house chips, it won't be upgrading the chip inside its flagship product – the iPhone, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said in his weekly Power-on newsletter.

Apple has released five Mac chips, such as the M1 and M2, in the past year and a half, and these have powered its PCs and laptops, the Apple writer noted. In order to facilitate this, the company's silicon engineering group had to shift many testing, development and production resources to Mac chips, he added.

This focus, along with the supply bottlenecks, apparently led to slower progress with the iPhone, Apple Watch, and even a cellular modem, Gurman said.

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The entry-level iPhone 14 models due to be launched this fall will retain the A15 chip that was part of the previous iPhone 13 models, the columnist said. Only the Pro version will get a new A16 processor, he added.

"The annual performance increases for Apple's iPhone processors also have slowed in recent years," Gurman said.

The Apple Watch will likely come with the same general processing performance for a third year in a row, the Apple writer said.

Ignoring non-Mac chips, according to Gurman, isn't a wise move, as Apple derives about 60% of revenue from devices that do not run M1 or M2 chips.

Apple closed Friday's session at $138.93, up 1.62%, according to Benzinga Pro data.