The chip in an iPhone 18 Pro, from quartz to a shop in A Coruña

Summary

The whole chain

About $66 of silicon in a €1,469 phone

Per wafer: About 650 chips fit on a 300 mm wafer; at the reported 70% yield about 450 work Calculated
Per chip: $30,000 a wafer ÷ about 450 good chips = about $66, before packaging, testing and memory Calculated
Countries: 9: the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India and Spain
Single sources: 1 maker of EUV machines, 1 town for crucible quartz, 1 company making the chip

Inside the fab

The loop every wafer goes round

A chip is built up in layers, and each layer is made by the same loop of machines. A leading-edge chip needs 50 to 100 mask layers and more than 1,000 steps, so a wafer goes round dozens of times over about 3 to 4 months. Almost every machine in the loop comes from the US, Japan or the Netherlands.

Sources: Averroes; chip.computer; makers’ market data listed in the table.

Step	What the machine does	Main makers	Share
Deposit	Lays down a film of metal or insulator a few atoms to a few hundred atoms thick	Applied Materials, Lam Research (US); Tokyo Electron (Japan); ASM (Netherlands)	The most spread-out step
Coat	Spins a thin layer of photoresist onto the wafer	Tokyo Electron (Japan)	About 90%; almost 100% for EUV
Expose	Projects the layer’s pattern onto the resist with EUV or deep-ultraviolet light	ASML (Netherlands)	The only EUV maker
Develop	Washes away the resist where the light did or did not fall, leaving a stencil	Tokyo Electron (Japan)	Same machine as coating
Etch	Uses plasma to cut into the layer wherever the stencil leaves it bare	Lam Research (US), Tokyo Electron (Japan), Applied Materials (US)	Top 3 over 90%; Lam about 35 to 39%
Clean	Strips the leftover resist and washes off residue	SCREEN, Tokyo Electron (Japan); Lam Research (US)	Not published
Implant	Fires ions into the silicon to change how it conducts	Applied Materials, Axcelis (US)	About 63% and 21% of units sold in 2024
Polish	Grinds the surface flat so the next layer starts level	Applied Materials (US), Ebara (Japan)	Applied about 70%
Inspect	Measures and checks every layer for defects	KLA (US)	About 56% overall; over 85% in optical wafer inspection

Legs

How each piece reaches the next place

Every leg of the chain, from the design file to the shop. Distances are straight lines between the points on the globe Calculated. Costs are for the thing that travels, not the trip.

Leg	From	To	What	How	Packed	Distance or time	Cost
1	Cupertino, Cambridge	Hsinchu	Layout file	Network	Data	Instant	About $725m to design
2	Spruce Pine	Japan	Quartz	Road, then sea	Bulk bags Check the source	Several weeks Check the source	From $5,000 a tonne
3	Germany, US, Japan	Wafer makers	Polysilicon	Sea or air Check the source	Sealed cleanroom bags	Not published	$5.84 a kg (solar)
4	Japan	Hsinchu	Wafers	Air	FOSB, 25 wafers	1 to 2 days Check the source	Not published
5	Veldhoven	Hsinchu	EUV machine	Several 747s	About 250 crates	About 9,500 km	$183m to $220m
6	Tokyo	Hsinchu	Photoresist	Air Check the source	Bottles, kept cool	About 2,150 km	About $1,800 a gallon
7	Pyeongtaek	Chiayi	Memory	Air Check the source	Not published	About 1,630 km	$145.90 for 12 GB
8	Hsinchu	Chiayi	Finished wafers	Road Check the source	Sealed pods	About 155 km	$30,000 a wafer
9	Chiayi	Chennai	Packaged chips	Air	Trays or reels Check the source	About 4,400 km	Not published
10	Chennai	Europe	Boxed phones	Air	Boxes on pallets	About 8,900 km	About $4.88 a kg
11	European hub	A Coruña	Boxed phones	Road Check the source	Boxes	Not published	Not published

Parts

What goes into what

Only the chip is traced on this page. Dashed boxes are parts not followed, or inputs that travel as data.

Chokepoints

Who controls each step

Step	Who	If it stops
Crucible quartz	2 mines in Spruce Pine, North Carolina	About 70 to 90% of high-purity quartz. Both shut when Hurricane Helene hit in September 2024, and restarted within weeks
Polysilicon	Hemlock, Wacker, Tokuyama	About half the world’s electronic-grade supply between the top 3
Wafers	Shin-Etsu, SUMCO and 3 others	The top 5 hold about 82 to 85% of 300 mm capacity
EUV machines	ASML, with Zeiss optics and a TRUMPF laser	The only maker in the world. No EUV machine, no 2 nm chip
Photoresist	4 Japanese firms	About 87 to 91% of the market
2 nm fabs	TSMC, in Taiwan	The only source of the A20 Pro
Memory	Samsung, with SK hynix and Micron	Samsung holds about 60 to 70% of Apple’s orders

Paperwork

The rules along the way

Rule	Set by	Where	What it does
EUV export licence	Netherlands	Veldhoven	EUV machines have not been sold to China since 2019
Bill of lading or air waybill	Carrier	Every shipment	Records what is on board and who can claim it
EU import duty	European Union	Entry to Spain	0% on smartphones, under the Information Technology Agreement
VAT	Spain	At the till	21%: about €255 of the €1,469 price Calculated
CE marking	European Union	Before sale	The phone meets EU safety and radio rules
Common charger rule	European Union	Before sale	Phones sold in the EU must charge by USB-C, since 28 December 2024

Risk

What can go wrong, and where

Where	Risk	What happens
North Carolina	Weather	Helene showed that 1 storm can stop most of the world’s crucible quartz
Netherlands	Capacity	ASML plans to ship more than 60 EUV machines in 2026, and every new fab needs some
Taiwan	Concentration	Every A20 Pro is made and packaged on 1 island
Korea	Memory	Demand for AI servers has tightened the supply of phone memory

Gaps

What the public record does not show

Which crucible maker, polysilicon plant and wafer maker supply this chip. The branches show the main suppliers, not confirmed links.
How long an A20 Pro wafer takes to pass through the fab, and how many mask layers TSMC’s 2 nm process uses. 3 to 4 months and 50 to 100 layers are typical figures for leading-edge chips.
The actual yield and price Apple pays TSMC. $30,000 a wafer and 70% yield are reported, not confirmed.
How phones reach Spain: which airport, which European hub, how long.
The cost of packaging this chip, and the prices of semiconductor-grade polysilicon and prime wafers.
How each material travels between suppliers: sea or air, packing and transit times are typical practice, not confirmed for this chip.

Sources