For several years, Apple has been steadily designing more and more of the chips powering its iPhones, iPads, Macs and Apple Watches. This creates a better user experience and helps trump rivals. Recently the company got a fresh incentive to go all-in on silicon: revelations that microprocessors with components designed by Intel Corp., Arm Holdings Plc and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. are vulnerable to hacking.

Steve Jobs long believed Apple should own the technologies inside its products rather than rely on mashups of components from other chip makers, including Samsung, Intel and Imagination Technologies. In 2008, the company made a small but significant step in that direction by acquiring boutique chip maker P.A. Semi. Two years later, Jobs unveiled the iPad. The world focused on the tablet’s giant touchscreen, book-reading prowess and creativity apps. But the most ground-breaking technology was hidden away inside: the A4, Apple’s first processor designed in-house.

That original “system-on-a-chip” has since been succeeded by increasingly powerful processors. Today, Apple packs its devices with custom components that process artificial intelligence tasks, track your steps, power game graphics, secure Face ID or Touch ID data, run the Apple Watch, pair AirPods to your phone and help make Macs work the way they do. The result: a chip powerhouse that could one day threaten the dominance of Qualcomm Inc. and even, eventually, Intel.

Piper Jaffrey senior analyst Mike Olson says that by designing its own chips, Apple cuts component costs, gets an early jump on future features because it controls research and development and keeps secrets away from frenemies such as Samsung. Apple declined to comment.

Apple isn’t the first company to create its own chips in-house. It’s just the most successful. HP Inc., Motorola, International Business Machines Corp. and Koninklijke Philips NV all had chip divisions at one time or another. Those ultimately failed or stumbled because chip-making is the sport of kings: It’s brutally expensive and requires massive scale. Apple has wisely focused on designing its silicon (for its system on a chips, Apple uses reference designs from Arm Holdings Plc). Manufacturing is left to others, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Apple’s push into the complicated and pricey chips business makes sense so long as the company is selling 300 million devices a year. And it's not as though the entrenched players are going anywhere. Qualcomm is investing in next-generation 5G networks, several companies are making AI chips and Intel is pushing mobile processors. Meanwhile, Samsung, Apple's arch rival, is a major chip manufacturer in its own right.

Apple has chip-building and testing facilities in unmarked buildings in and around hometown Cupertino, California, and in Herzliya, Israel, a hotbed of new technologies. The operation employs hundreds of people and is run by Johny Srouji, who joined Apple in 2008 after stints at Intel and IBM and has likened his chip architects to “artists.”

In recent months, Srouji has been poaching more and more modem engineers from Qualcomm. The chipmaker builds iPhone modems but is engaged in a legal battle with Apple over licensing fees Qualcomm charges smartphone makers. Hiring Qualcomm people could mean Apple plans to eventually create its own modems, which connect phones to cellular networks. For now, Apple is considering using Intel and MediaTek Inc. exclusively for modems in this year’s iPhone lineup, Bloomberg News reported last year.

Last year, Apple expanded its mobile chips arsenal to include a version of its Bluetooth-enabling wireless W2 chip for the latest Apple Watch, an AI chip called the Neural Engine and custom graphics processing units (GPUs) for the iPhone 8 and iPhone X lines. The new iPad, due to be released toward the end of the year, will probably also include the Apple-designed graphics engine and AI chip. Apple’s move into GPUs crushed the business of Imagination Technologies, which had previously provided the chips for iOS devices.

So far, only two Mac lines include custom Apple processors: the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and the iMac Pro. Apple is working on at least three updated Mac models with custom co-processors for release as soon as this year, including updated laptops and a new desktop, according to a person familiar with the plan.

Apple watchers believe it’s just a matter of time before the company designs the entire CPU, at which point Intel would lose its fifth-largest customer.