Apple (AAPL) Chief Operating Officer Sabih Khan told the Wall Street Journal that the tech giant is more confident in its plans for the Mac Mini in Houston than for the Mac Pro in Austin, citing stronger and more consistent demand.
Apple sells hundreds of times more iPhones than Mac Minis, estimates Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, and Apple still has no plans to reshore iPhone assembly. Khan said Apple is focused on simpler reshoring goals to start.
“We’re very focused on the things that we believe are critical for future innovation and things that will differentiate our products over time,” he said. “And its components, its sub-assemblies, its advanced silicon.”
Apple is expanding its Houston facility to assemble the Mac Mini desktop. In partnership with Foxconn (FXCOF), the company plans to convert a large warehouse on-site into over 200,000 square feet of manufacturing space later this year.
Under pressure from the Trump administration, Apple vowed last year to invest $600 billion in the U.S. over four years. But the commitment also includes the more than 100 million chips Apple plans to buy from TSMC (TSM) Arizona this year, said David Tom, its global head of procurement. “We’re buying as much of the output of this fab as we can,” he said, referring to the fabrication plant.
The effort is modest relative to the global chip supply chain. And Apple’s (AAPL) purchases from the factory represent a small percentage of its total demand for chips, the key components that power its devices, the WSJ report said. Even so, the scale of construction at TSMC and other suppliers shows Apple’s effort to reshore its chip supply chain is bearing fruit, the report added, after the WSJ toured the desert Southwest with Apple executives.
“The role we play for the whole industry is that by working together [with TSMC], we can ramp that node to high volume, high yield, very fast, and then others will follow as we go on to the next node,” said Apple’s Tom.
TSMC’s Arizona site will be a company town on more than 2,000 acres if its plans are ultimately completed. One fab is built and producing chips, a second will come online next year, and a third, currently a steel-beam skeleton, by 2030, the report added.
Nvidia (NVDA) makes some of its Blackwell processors at TSMC Arizona, and down the road from TSMC (TSM) is another construction site, this one over 100 acres, where Amkor Technology (AMKR) is planning two chip “packaging” facilities with the help of an Apple investment.
“When the first is completed in 2027, it will take chip wafers from TSMC, dice them into individual chips, and add connectors so the chips can be plugged into devices.”