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Comment by stephengillie | Hacker News Reader

Somehow, companies like Apple (and nVidia) get to call themselves "completely vertically integrated" even though they don't own any fabs. I've never understood this.

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I never saw Apple call itself this way, but I can be wrong, I believe it's more of an Apple rumors thing, like some years ago some people were telling how Apple would just put it's custom designed CPU on Macbooks and build everything by itself, including GPU.

This happened even here in HN, I think these guys are the equivalent of the MS fans back at the time of the dot-com bubble telling how MS would rule the world.

EDIT: a "this" became "these"

Samsung is considered completely vertically integrated by many, even though they don't mine their own raw materials or operate their own power plants to power their factories. I've never understood that either.

I wouldn't be too sure! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Engineering

I've always heard "vertically integrated" as a separate category from "IC design house". Supply chains are long and the endpoints vary depending on the context.

"Completely" is not true, but maybe completeness isn't the important/essential advantage of verticals.

I'm learning from my comment that "completely" is entirely relative to a group and their narrative.

There's at least one claim out there that Apple has a fab now: http://semiaccurate.com/2013/07/12/apple-has-their-own-fab/ .

(I suppose one question is when Google will get one...)

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