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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.
Apple and Samsung should insist that Qualcom license their in-name-only FRAND patents to AMD as a second source. How did these major companies manage to make thensleves dependent on Qualcom? THe only other leverage now will be either the EU or China. I could see China insiting Qualcom lend their patents to Huawei and I cold see the EU insisting Qualcom also allow second sourcing.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
What's wrong with Intel? They had a great streak after that Netburst fiasco (which took some very illegal anti-competitive practices from their part to survive pretty much unscathed), but it's been several years now that they seem to be struggling with new things. AMD finally caught up with them, their new fab process didn't pan out, they've been trying to enter the smartphone business in various ways and it seems they are always failing...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
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?
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.
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
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.
The patent fees were always a percentage of retail price, being the core technology that makes a "cellphone" a "cellphone".
The increased phone price wasn't caused by 5G patent fees.
Apple didn't like the fact that Qualcomm got more money when they switched a 128GB NAND chip for a 512GB chip and charged the customer $300 more for what is effectively a $30 SD card.
Huawei holds more 5G patents than Qualcomm and many of their patents are critical to the 5G standard. Qualcomm and Huawei have crosslicensed.
**Life is too short to be serious**