> Third, Apple’s CPUs are big and in this game, big means expensive. According to a 2016 report by the Linley Group, the Hurricane cores in the Apple A10  are “about twice the size of other high-end mobile CPUs”. Even the smaller Zephyr cores are much larger than their low-power counterparts, “nearly twice as large as Cortex-A53.” The key here is that Apple sells smartphones, not chips. As a result, it can afford to make the SoCs more expensive and recoup the money in other places, including the final retail price.

ARM and Qualcomm, however, are in the chip selling business. ARM does the CPU core design for Qualcomm (and others like MediaTek) and Qualcomm designs the chips, which it in turn sells to handset makers like Samsung, Sony, LG, etc. ARM needs to make a profit. Qualcomm needs to make a profit. All the OEMs need to make profits. The practical result is that Qualcomm can’t afford to make overly expensive processors or OEMs will start looking elsewhere.