Apple CEO John Ternus calls the global memory chip shortage a crisis, and he isn’t ruling out Chinese memory to get through it. “The constraints in memory are absolutely a crisis,” he tells Time. “So our fundamental belief is that all options should be on the table.”
The line answers a July Financial Times report that Apple had begun testing memory chips made by a Chinese company to increase supply. A bipartisan group of US senators then wrote to Apple, arguing that doing so would imperil national security.
The shortage has raised costs and delayed production, Time notes: it’s the same memory crunch behind this year’s PC slump. Time also describes Ternus as a CEO who speaks in platitudes, which makes this line stand out.
Ternus also defends leaning on Google for AI. The new Siri runs on an Apple model that uses Google’s Gemini technology. “There’s not really a goal that we have to make every single thing in a product,” he says. Steve Jobs famously wanted to own the “whole widget”; Ternus’ Apple is fine buying a few parts.
Back in 2011, Ternus and five other engineers filed a patent application for foldable devices. The foldables other companies shipped first “felt kind of cheap and crappy,” he says.
The iPhone Duo, Apple’s first foldable, fights the crease with a nanotexture surface made from a custom polymer, over a hinge with more than 100 tiny precision parts. A new display engine handles the switch between the inner and outer screens, and iOS moves the main controls to the right side, where your thumb is.
Ternus doesn’t expect AI to make the phone obsolete, either. “People want physical things,” he says. “So I don’t see a scenario where all of a sudden, our devices disappear and we don’t have a need for an iPhone.”
Pre-orders for the iPhone Duo open in the Philippines at 8:00 pm Manila today, October 16th: Php 159,990 (about $2,540) for 256GB, Php 175,990 for 512GB, Php 207,990 for 1TB and Php 254,990 for 2TB. It will be officially available for retail starting on October 30th.
