> This thing ONLY EXISTS in the first place because of Apple's continual vertical integration push

This seems pretty grounded.

> The whole reason why they're able to beat Intel/AMD is because they don't have to cater to the exact same generic market that the established players do, but instead massively optimise for their exact needs.

I'm less convinced of this. Their exact needs seem to be making laptops... and so these chips would make interesting candidates for other laptops, if split off from Apple.

It's never going to happen, and an independent company might struggle for R&D money, but if these prove to be better laptop CPUs there is a market there.