Apple Considered Purchasing Intel's Smartphone Modem Chip Business

Friday April 26, 2019 12:07 pm PDT by Juli Clover

Apple had discussions with Intel about potentially acquiring parts of Intel's smartphone modem chip business, reports The Wall Street Journal. Apple was interested in Intel's technology to speed up its own efforts to build modem chips for smartphones.

Intel and Apple entered into discussions last summer and the talks continued for months, but ended right around the time Apple settled its legal dispute and reached a supply agreement with Qualcomm.

Intel 5G Modem
Sources at Intel that spoke to The Wall Street Journal said that Intel is exploring "strategic alternatives" for its smartphone modem chip business, and is still interested in a sale to Apple or another company.

In an interview yesterday, Intel CEO Bob Swan confirmed that Intel is considering alternatives "based on what's best" for Intel's IP and employees.

Selling the modem business would allow Intel to unload a costly operation that was losing about $1 billion annually, according to another person familiar with its performance. Any sale would likely include staff, a portfolio of patents and modem designs related to multiple generations of wireless technology, said Patrick Moorhead, principal at Moor Insights & Strategy, a technology firm.

Intel announced earlier this month that it was exiting the 5G smartphone business, just hours after Apple and Qualcomm announced a resolution to their legal troubles and a new supply deal.

Apple had been planning to use Intel's 5G chips in its 2020 iPhones, but rumors suggested Intel was having trouble meeting design deadlines and that the relationship between Apple and Intel was souring. Just yesterday, Swan also confirmed that Apple's deal with Qualcomm was the reason why Intel decided to stop making 5G chips.

Apple is now planning to use Qualcomm's 5G modem chips in its 2020 5G iPhones. Intel has said that it is going to continue to supply 4G LTE chips to meet already established orders, which means that Apple's 2019 iPhone lineup will likely continue to use Intel chips rather than Qualcomm chips. It is too late in the design cycle for Apple to swap chips for this year's upcoming devices.

Tags: 5G iPhone Guide, Intel, Qualcomm

Top Rated Comments

AngerDanger

98 months ago

Selling the modem business would allow Intel to unload a costly operation that was losing about $1 billion annually, according to another person familiar with its performance. Any sale would likely include staff, a portfolio of patents and modem designs related to multiple generations of wireless technology, said Patrick Moorhead, principal at Moor Insights & Strategy, a technology firm.

Selling the modem business would also prevent one other thing from ever happening:

Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Freida

98 months ago

What is so special about 5G? Sure its faster but LTE is already fast so why is everyone obsessed about 5G? Also, it will take years before the coverage is present so surely there is no rush :)

Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)

realtuner

98 months ago

I’m seeing a 26ms ping on my LTE on my 2017 iPhone X. I just ran Speedtest from inside the office building I work in.

Seems fine, pretty darn low latency really.

Just tested my XS Max (inside our large steel framed warehouse) and got 22ms ping, 45Mbps download and 26 Mbps upload.

I also looked at my history over the years (nice that the Speedtest App keeps a record of all your tests).

On 3G iPhones I had results from 1.5-4.5Mbps.
On 4G iPhones I had results from 5-20Mbps for my earlier devices (5S and 6).
On my XS Max I get between 40-80Mbps consistently.

The difference from 3G to 4G was significant. The difference from 4G to 5G might look good on paper, but will have practically no impact whatsoever on people using their devices. Getting over 40Mbps is plenty fast for any tasks I could reasonably do on a mobile device. It's also plenty fast enough to use as a mobile hotspot for my MBP - I never see slow downs or delays while browsing the Internet or editing documents stored online. It's not like I'll ever need to download multi-GB files when I'm mobile.

5G is just a check mark on a feature list that companies will try to make seem far more important than it really is so they have an excuse to sell people shiny new devices.

Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)

name99

98 months ago

What is so special about 5G? Sure its faster but LTE is already fast so why is everyone obsessed about 5G? Also, it will take years before the coverage is present so surely there is no rush :)

What answer do you want? QC's answer is that it is the second coming of christ, the greatest tech advance in human history --- and it can all be yours right now as long as you give them lots of your money.

How about more rational analysis?
- for "normal" phone usage, 5G gives more AGGREGATE bandwidth/tower. This is not important insofar as your indivdiual phone goes faster. What it means is that even as your phone uses more data year after year, and more phones join the system year after year, things don't get slower. No-one (with a brain, so, yes, this excluded 90% of the internet) cares that a SINGLE phone can run at a kabillion bits/sec; what matters is that the cell tower can put a kabillion bits/sec to service all those phones simultaneously connected to it.

- for IoT usage, 5G introduces a new set of much more efficient protocols that allow all sorts of things (security equipment, metering equipment, weather equipment, health equipment, ...) to communicate with the cellular network more efficiently. This is important, useful, and will be of widespread general benefit. But it's also only relevant to the IoT makers and the telcos, it doesn't affect your phone.

- for dense populations (like stadia, conventions, airports, ...) 5GNR (aka mmWave) allows for much higher bandwidth in these localized areas. This is useful if you've ever been upset at how slow your phone is in such environments.
Note, however, that WiFi has its own plan to achieve the same sort of performance boosts in these environments...
So, yes, we understand why QC and VZW want you to believe that 5GNR is ESSENTIAL to your connected future, but it's far from clear that this is actually true; it's possible that WiFi's stake in this area (called WiGig/802.11ad) will get there first and provide a better solution to this particular problem; I've not seen a good analysis either way.

Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)

jimbobb24

98 months ago

It’s bad for the industry if there is only one supplier.

Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)

David1964

98 months ago

What is so special about 5G? Sure its faster but LTE is already fast so why is everyone obsessed about 5G? Also, it will take years before the coverage is present so surely there is no rush :)

Exactly! Don’t know about you,but i am sick of all the tech sites keep banging on about it.

Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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Apple Considered Purchasing Intel's Smartphone Modem Chip Business

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