With 2022 coming to an end, we're starting to look forward to everything that 2023 will bring - and that will include a new iPhone.

The iPhone 15 has already seen some rumours starting to appear, but there's one change coming to the industry that Apple is likely to want to take advantage of.

Over the past few years, advancements in manufacturing have seen some of the core tech moving to smaller architectures - and one of the companies behind this is TSMC, which manufactures Apple Silicon.

The company has announced that 3mn process technology has entered volume production, meaning it's going to be available to the likes of Apple and Qualcomm for future hardware. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that's just been announced sits on a 4nm process, as is Apple A16 Bionic.

So this next-gen tech is likely to underpin future devices and while those we see launching in early 2023 will still use a 4nm process, new hardware that appears later in 2023 may well move to 3nm.

TSMC says that the new process offers a 30-35 per cent reduction in power demand when running at the same speeds - and that's what might translate into increased efficiency in devices when they get into customer's hands.

While the hardware in smartphones is getting increasingly efficient, the processing demands are often increasing, with advanced image processing, increasing on-device AI demands, and a whole lot more swinging in to gobble up more power.

We're still some way from seeing any benefits that the 3nm process might bring to devices, but this will be the direction that the conversation swings over the next 12-18 months.

The iPhone 15 is not expected to be announced until September 2023 and we'd not expect any details to be confirmed by Apple until launch day.