Intel to Supply Apple With 70% of LTE Chips Needed for 2018 iPhones

Qualcomm asked for it. I think it's safe to say Steve Jobs would have let this happen.

The hunt for the elusive Qualcomm phones

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Qualcomm has had years to perfect the LTE handoff on CDMA, and I don't know if I trust Intel with that yet. Could be a non-issue, but that’s my concern personally.

While in no fan of Qualcomm, it’s kind of annoying that Apple is willingly using an inferior modem. Didn’t I read another article/post stating that Apple actually gimped the current Qualcomm modem so it wouldn’t outshine the Intel one?

It was originally going to be 90%, but Intel had demanded something Apple just couldn't allow:

Even if Intel starts making CDMA capable modems, Qualcomm still gets paid.
They own a huge chunk of CDMA patents.
Heck Qualcomm still gets a piece of every Intel modem sale due to the SEP licenses.

Which Qualcomm modem would be suitable for the next iPhone? I believe the intel XMM 7560 is the other modem.

I've recently moved from iPhone 6S to iPhone X and the modem behaviour at the Cell Edge is terrible, over twice the ammount of dropped calls on the X (Intel modem) compared to the 6S (Qualcomm modem).

Qualcomm - They have the best Modem. No argument about it. But according to Tim Cook, on record, Qualcomm charges 5x more royalty then all other SEP "combined". That is Nokia + Ericsson + ZTE + Huawei + Samsung + Intel + some others. i.e 80% of all patents cost on mobile network are going to Qualcomm, granted Qualcomm has many other patents from CPU , GPU, Power Management and UI etc.... but seriously 5x?

Knowing Cook, he manipulated that number somehow. He's rather good at that kind of thing. For example, Apple has no license with Qualcomm. Apple left that to Foxconn and the other manufacturers, so that the license fee would only be based on what Foxconn sells phones to Apple for, NOT for the MUCH BIGGER price that Apple demands from its own customers.

In any case, the reason Qualcomm can get a bit more than most others, is because they created the core technology for 3G, and own about half the patents for it.

Since then, they've also spent billions of dollars a year in R&D on LTE and further generations. So they also own a lot of that as well.

License fees repay them and all the others who do the research to make our phones much faster. The billions that Apple stashes overseas does none of that for us.

I have yet to seen any people saying, why has Apple put up with Qualcomm for all these years?

That's like asking why Apple has "put up" with Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and other suppliers and licensers. Because those other companies actually create and manufacture the very technology without which the iPhone would be useless.

Apple is an incredible hypocrite when it comes to license fees. Back when the iPhone first came out, they wanted up to $40 per device for anyone to license their patents. Not to mention the heavy fees they wanted from Samsung for infringing a few non-essential UI patents.

As for charging by device price, that's done with many patents. Heck, Apple itself licenses its own "Made for iPhone" IP at a percentage of a third party device's price. Apple even wanted 10% of a device's price at first, with a $10 minimum, while Qualcomm only asks 3.25% of a device. Which technology cost billions more to create, Made for iPhone or the worldwide cellular system? :)

Mind you, Qualcomm's prices are likely to drop, same as they've done for years. Recently they even capped the base device price for royalties at $400. This was apparently a peace offering to Apple, whose latest phones have gone over that amount in cost from a factory, I believe.

Apple getting bolder and bolder ever since they removed headphone jack!