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Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away. That's the lesson Imagination Technologies, Apple's longtime supplier of graphics processors, has learned of late. After announcing that the iPhone maker was winding down its use of Imagination's technology, the company's stock price promptly fell off a cliff that same day. That came after Apple poached a handful of Imagination's top executives.
As this chart from Statista shows, Imagination is far from the only company with a huge dependency on Apple. While firms like Cirrus Logic, Apple's audio chip supplier, and Dialog Semiconductor, a power-management chip designer, have reached great heights being a part of Apple's supply chain, their continued success seems to hinge on staying in the giant's good graces.
Apple is the world's most valuable company, so it's bound to drive a high percentage of some firms' revenue. And the likes of Glu Mobile, a mobile games maker, and Foxconn, the manufacturing titan, aren't in any danger of being directly replaced by Apple the way Imagination was. But being so reliant does reinforce Apple's position of power as it puts its devices together. It also limits how high a supplier's share price can go, which explains why Dialog's stock recently dropped at the hint of Apple making its own power-management tech.
Mike Nudelman/Business Insider/Statista
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