Slashdot Mirror
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.
This is a bit surprising not so much because Intel has been having such a good time in phone silicon(since they haven't); but because I would have assumed that Intel would have considered an at least adequate cell modem to be essential for purposes of selling their CPUs and chipsets for 'IoT' and embedded stuff; as well as 'Centrino' style chipset bundling.
You can certainly slap a 3rd party cell modem card into an x86(it's a standard option on a fair percentage of laptop lines); but that is considerably less compact than the ARM SoC option; which is a minus for space constrained applications. It's also likely to be more expensive and power hungry, since peripheral integration usually ends up being helpful on those counts.
Given that, it seems like Intel is either really pessimistic about their situation, enough so that they don't think they can even justify a pet cell modem aggressively sold along with their chips and wifi/bt silicon(either just because the R&D isn't going so well or because they suspect the patent litigation will be hideous); or they are fairly optimistic about Qualcom being more cooperative in the future and being willing to license modems for integration at rates reasonable enough that it's simply not worth reinventing the wheel.
I'm just not sure which. It doesn't help that Apple's main possible motives point in the same two directions: either a belief that the patent situation is bad enough that they'll get hammered in court/import bans/etc. even if they cultivate a secondary supplier; or a belief that Qualcom's position is weakening and they are likely to be cooperative enough on pricing and not shaking people down on patents that there's no reason to turn down their parts unless something genuinely superior shows up(which, so far, it hasn't).
Any guesses?
This is a bit surprising not so much because Intel has been having such a good time in phone silicon(since they haven't); but because I would have assumed that Intel would have considered an at least adequate cell modem to be essential
They probably do consider that essential.
But the fact is, they just cannot do as good a job as Qualcomm can. Losing Apple meant that there was no way they could fund the years required for Intel to build up the expertise needed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What's unreasonable about a percent? Apple is using Qualcomm inventions to extort people. And yes, they are real inventions, not apple's rounded corners.