Apple’s A4 ARM based Mobile Chips Costs $1 Billion to produce?

There has been a lot of talks and rumours going on all over the internet about the features and pricing of Apple’s much awaited Tablet, Apple iPad, and surprisingly, the price is low as well. But recently, there has been an article published on NY Times which tells us that the A4 ARM-based chips that will be used in the Apple iPads cost almost $1 billion to produce from scratch. Can you believe it? Well, when I read it in the start, I didn’t believed it either but its true.

NY Times reports that companies like Apple, Quadcomm and Nvidia are designing their own ARM based mobile chips that can cost companies almost $1 billion if they had to make it from scratch

Ashlee Vance from NY times said:

Apple’s coming iPad tablet computer will run on an ARM chip. So, too, will new tiny laptops from Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo. A couple of start-ups have even started to explore the idea of using ARM chips in computer servers.

It is also reported that:

“Apple was the first company to make a really aspirational device that wasn’t based on Intel chips and Microsoft’s Windows,” said Fred Weber, a chip industry veteran. “The iPhone broke some psychological barriers people had about trying new products and helped drive this consumer electronics push.”