COGS or cost of revenue accounts for a much larger percentage of the revenue for all industry sectors than net income  Thus, a small percentage of savings in COGS can result in a much larger gain in net income.

Looking specifically at the technology hardware & peripheries sub-industry (including providers of smart phones like Apple), an industry trend analysis shows that up to the fiscal year of 2020, this sub-industry is increasing and stable in the US. Comparing US, Korea and Japan, US is the largest in both revenue and profits, Korea has the most fluctuated profits, Japan is the smallest in both revenue and profit. However, US has the lowest proportion of profitable enterprises – the highest % of companies losing money.

Looking at the profitability from a different angle (operating profit vs. total cost), we can make the same observation: Apple is very profitable and competitive in the industry.

Looking into the revenue breakdown of the technology hardware & peripheries industry and comparing a few companies (Apple, Dell, HP), we can understand their cost structure and sourcing objectives a lot better. We can see that the industry average COGS accounts for 63% of the revenue. With ~ 57%, Apple is doing better than the industry average, but COGS (especially purchasing cost as Apple does little manufacturing by itself) is still the major cost driver. In comparison, HP has a more urgent need to work on sourcing and manufacturing as its COGS is above the industry average at 80% of the revenue. In addition to a high COGS, Dell also have an issue with its Sales, General & Admin cost, which is well above the industry average. 
Overall we see that COGS is the biggest driver of revenue and therefore a priority of Apple.  It is also notable that Apple has the largest R&D expense and smallest SG&A expense.  

Apple's position within the semiconductor supply chain: materials markets (chemical and mining companies, manufacturers of industrial machinery), semiconductor equipment (SME) suppliers - ( original equipment manufacturers (OEM): TSMC); semiconductor manufacturing companies; downstream customers (Apple Inc.). The top 2 revenue SME in 2022 are Applied Materials Inc. (US) and ASML (Netherland). ASML is the only producer of lithography machines using EUV technologies which were used to produce most advanced chips. 

Where to look for semi-conductor suppliers? Let us check out the countries with the strongest semiconductors industry. Recall that this industry comprises of companies engaged in the design and fabrication of semiconductors and semiconductor devices (this definition comes from Wiki). While this industry is global, North America and the Indo-Pacific are its critical regions. 

Drilling down further into the country level, we found that countries with the highest total revenue in the semiconductor industry in FY 2022 are US, China, Taiwan, Japan. South Korea was in the top 4 performers in 2021, but slacked off in 2022 (possibly, due to the slowdown in demands that started in the second half of 2022: https://www.semiconductors.org/despite-short-term-cyclical-downturn-global-semiconductor-markets-long-term-outlook-is-strong/). These countries play pivotal roles in the global semiconductor landscape. Noticeably, Taiwan's revenue increases very fast (50% of US revenue). 

Comparing the semiconductors industry among US, Taiwan, China and Japan over time, we can see that US semiconductors is the largest in revenue and profits, and also growing fast especially during COVID. In comparison, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is on the rise, especially on profit. China and Japan are much smaller.

Now let us do a market share analysis of the biggest market (US) to see the competition intensity (competitive or monopolized) and stability of the major players. The concentration and competition intensity analysis of the semiconductor sub-industry in the US shows that the market shares are stable, and the market is relative competitive with a few whales and many smaller fish. The major players are Intel, Qualcomm, Micron, TI and Broadcom.

In the second biggest market, Taiwan, the competition is intense. While TSMC remains the dominating player over the years, there are more and more companies in this crowded space. It's worth mentioning: (1) Ase Technology, founded in 2018, a leading provider of semiconductor packaging and test services, (2) MediaTek: a fabless semiconductor company that provides SoCs for wireless communications, high-definition television, handheld mobile devices.

The largest semiconductors companies from US, Taiwan, China, Japan and South Korea by revenue, 2022.
In 2022, it seems that there are good potential suppliers for CPU / processors from the enterprise ranking of the publicly traded semi-conductor companies.  We picked: TSMC, Intel, Qualcomn, Broadcom (top 4 revenue performers in 2022), AMD (a well-known chip maker), Texas Instrument and Globalfoundries (for their potential and diversification.) The US awarded $1.5 B to Global Foundries  We did not pick NVIDIA since they make GPUs and we did not pick Micron since they make memory chips. 

The revenue breakdown of 2022 US and Taiwan semiconductors provides pricing details. For $100 COGS, GFS sold for $138, INTC sold for $174, AMD $181, QCOM $238, TSM $247, AVGO $299, TXN $320. Industry average (US): $203. Cluster I (INTC, AMD): high COGS, high R&D, SG&A, low profit. Cluster II (all others except GFS): low COGS, low R&D, SG&A, high profit.

INTC / GFS / TXN: balanced liability and equity. QCOM / AVGO: highest non-current liabilities. TSM / AMD: highest equity / lowest liabilities. 

By this assets breakdown, semiconductors, US and Taiwan, 2022, three kinds of semiconductors companies: IC design, such as AMD / AVGO: 3% PPE, 70% intangible (IP), and QCOM: 10% PPE << 25% IP. IC OEM / foundry, such as TSM / GFS: > 55% PPE, < 2% IP. IC design & fabrication, such as  

PPE assets change over time for semiconductors. Top semiconductors manufacturers: TSM, Intel, GFS. TSM~Intel. GFS is much smaller in absolute value. All others are quite negligible.