There is a big profit gap between TSMC and Apple. During the five years from 20 17 to 2022, TSMC's gross profit margin exceeded 50% and its net profit margin reached 35.26%. Ultra-high gross profit margin and net profit margin are unique in the electronics industry. Compared with Apple's revenue from 20 17 to 2022, Apple's gross profit is only 38%, and its net interest rate is 2 1.2%. Data comparison shows that Apple's gross profit margin and net profit margin are lower than TSMC by more than 10 percentage points respectively. Although TSMC is only an OEM, its profit is higher than its core product chip.
Apple's profit margin is mainly the profit margin brought by iPhone. If the expenses of packaging, production cost, transportation, operation and tax are excluded, the profit margin of iPhone can indeed reach 6 1.8%. But with these necessary costs, the iPhone's net profit margin is less than 30%. Let's look at the software again. After deducting enterprise costs and income tax, the annual net profit of some Apple mobile phones is less than 20%. In particular, Apple has to pay Qualcomm 2 billion yuan in patent fees every year, which will be shared equally when calculating the profit rate. Overall, Apple's profit margin will be low.
The cost of TSMC consists of raw material cost, equipment cost and production cost, while the R&D cost subtracts marketing cost and channel cost. TSMC has only 70,000 employees. Compared with Apple's 1 10000 employees, TSMC's monthly salary expenditure is less than half. In terms of hardware cost, Apple is decentralized, and most parts are purchased from third-party companies. On the contrary, TSMC accounts for a very low proportion of hardware costs and relies more on technology investment to increase value.
On the whole, TSMC has a certain foundation in maintaining the ultra-high interest rate of products, and its expenditure in other aspects is obviously less than that of Apple, which makes TSMC far higher than Apple in the overall interest rate.