Chief Executive Jalal Bagherli told a German newspaper, Euro am Sonntag, that at the start of the year Apple commissioned it with the design of chips for many devices for 2019 and 2020.

Dialog’s stock has lost more than half of its value over the past year on investor concerns that Apple is working on its own battery saving chips for iPhones. Apple has been doing that sort of thing a lot lately as it tries to cut the costs to keep its product margins high.

Analysts reckon that Dialog derives more than half its revenue from supplying Apple with power management integrated circuits (PMICs).

Dialog in December acknowledged that Apple could develop its power chips. It said at the time there was no risk to its existing supply deals in 2018 and that it was in the advanced stages of working with Apple on designing“2019 type products” that could lead to commercial contracts by this month.

“Negotiations over that chip are still ongoing. But we expect to deliver a chip design for testing in the customer’s system in the second half of the year”, Bagherli told Euro am Sonntag.

Dialog's biggest single shareholder is Tsinghua Unigroup, China’s top state silicon chipmaker, which holds about nine percent of voting rights in the group.