A new report indicates that Apple is trying to lessen its dependance on Samsung's chip making business and the U.S. electronics giant has excluded its Korean rival from a project to develop A7 application processors, due to be released in the first half of next year. The Korean Times citied today two anonymous sources in Samsung's local partner chain and reported that Apple is already sharing confidential data for its next A7 system-on-chip (SoC) with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). The report added that TSMC has already begun ordering its contractors to supply equipment to produce Apple's next processors using a 20-nanometer level processing technology.

Apple has been paying billions of dollars to Samsung to use the latter?s application processors in its iPhone and iPad devices. Losing Apple's orders could be an important hit the the Samsung's semiconductor business company, as demand for conventional chips such as memory are also low due to poor sales of personal computers.

Samsung reportedly plans to maintain growth momentum by expanding its business with NVIDIA through increasing contractual chip orders. In addition, sources said Samsung hopes its handset division will fill the gap as the company's Exynos-branded processors will be used in the next line of Galaxy devices.

Samsung declined to comment.