Anobit to the rescue

That's where Anobit and its technology come in. Anobit has developed unique technologies that can increase the reliability of multi-level cell designs. In fact, Apple already uses an Anobit-designed DSP chip in iPhones, iPads, and MacBook Airs to extend the life of the NAND flash chips in those devices.Anobit—like Apple's other recent silicon design acquisitions, PA Semi and Intrinsity—is a fabless design house. Its specialty is creating, testing, and verifying new designs that implement its technological innovations, and then licensing the designs to companies like Apple. By buying up Anobit, Apple can keep its flash storage improvement technologies all to itself as a competitive advantage.Still, Apple will have to hire contract fabs or other manufacturers to build chips using the improved designs. Given the headaches that Samsung, Apple's top chip supplier, has caused Apple in the smartphone marketplace, the Anobit acquisition is perhaps another sign that Apple is prepared to drop Samsung altogether and move production of in-house designed custom silicon to someone like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. UGG Classic Cardy BootsFurthermore, building an R&D center in Israel will put Apple among other top tech giants that have located research centers near "Technion," or Israel's Institute of Technology. That will also put Apple's silicon design team in close proximity to partners like Intel and Qualcomm.The basic hardware of the iPhone isn't hard to replicate—an ARM-based processor, NAND flash, Qualcomm baseband, a touch screen, and a handful of largely off-the-shelf parts are fairly easy to come by these days. But highly optimized designs for efficient, low-power operation and long-term reliability don't come cheap. With Apple able to leverage its own in-house expertise and contracting out production in the kind of volume that Apple sees with the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air, it can afford to integrate those optimizations into its products while still maintaining market-competitive prices and market-leading profits.