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Intel Will Exit 5G Phone Modem Business, Hours After Apple and Qualcomm Settle Licensing Dispute (cnet.com)
Intel announced Tuesday afternoon that it will no longer be working on 5G chips for smartphones, leaving Apple with only one supplier for its iPhones, Qualcomm -- the same company that it was battling in court until midday Tuesday. CNET reports: Intel late Tuesday said it plans to exit the 5G smartphone modem business. It had been working on a processor for Apple, with the chip expected to be in iPhones in 2020. Lately there have been worries the chip wouldn't be ready until iPhones released in 2021. "The company will continue to meet current customer commitments for its existing 4G smartphone modem product line, but does not expect to launch 5G modem products in the smartphone space, including those originally planned for launches in 2020," Intel said in a press release. Its only customer in modems is Apple.
Intel added that it will "complete an assessment of the opportunities for 4G and 5G modems in PCs, internet of things devices and other data-centric devices." It also said it will "continue to invest in its 5G network infrastructure business." "We are very excited about the opportunity in 5G and the 'cloudification' of the network, but in the smartphone modem business it has become apparent that there is no clear path to profitability and positive returns," Intel CEO Bob Swan said in a statement. The announcement comes hours after Apple and Qualcomm announced that they had reached a settlement in their multi-year battling over licensing royalties.
Intel added that it will "complete an assessment of the opportunities for 4G and 5G modems in PCs, internet of things devices and other data-centric devices." It also said it will "continue to invest in its 5G network infrastructure business." "We are very excited about the opportunity in 5G and the 'cloudification' of the network, but in the smartphone modem business it has become apparent that there is no clear path to profitability and positive returns," Intel CEO Bob Swan said in a statement. The announcement comes hours after Apple and Qualcomm announced that they had reached a settlement in their multi-year battling over licensing royalties.
I hate to see qualcom's sleazy Frand practices win by default.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Oh yeah it was when they first dropped out of the Graphics Card Market in the late 90s, then followed up by dropping all those 'low margin' embedded systems and memory parts whose market they used to dominate.
Intel stopped being competitive when the MBAs decided they should focus on their 'core market' of desktop and network chips and ignored the fact that that BREADTH of ecosystem benefitted them in less tangible ways, like providing less complicated products to test agains, and to get the R&D and engineering experience from a wide variety of problems, optimizations or test procedures of which might have benefits in other aspects of their business... like when they had that SATA controller failure a few years back. Intel had dealt with similar issues on other process technologies in the past on their embedded systems processors. Having access to all that extra test data from even higher volume products with simpler and easier to debug logic has untold benefits when shifting process technologies. In the past Intel did that across their product lines, before focusing so much on their CPUs that they compromised their own design and testing infrastructure by having CPUs become the leader of process technologies instead of trialling it on other parts first (I think they still do flash on the latest processes, but in the past it could have been flash, ram, or certain high margin embedded controllers where debugging intermittent failures and getting clearer feedback for modifications/updates to process models was easier and clearer to do. I imagine a lot of the 10nm shortcomings are related to exactly this change in technlogical leadership. Intel's time came and went, and unless someone absolutely slaughters the board and sensior leadership to reinstate engineers with some management competence, instead of MBAs with no engineering competence, Intel will continue to falter and eventually fall, no matter how much business they seem to have today.
Intel only wanted to do it because Apple guaranteed demand and gave them Qualcomm's IP to use.
No one else wants to pay Qualcomm patent license fees just to use an inferior chipset from Intel.