Apple using Intel modems

[Anon_lawyer]

It looks like Intel's efforts to get their modems in Iphones are paying off. Apparently they are being dual sourced, Intel and Qualcomm.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-chip-order-from-apple-first-major-mobile-win

 

[Commodus]

Not entirely surprising. Apple was technically using those modems in the early days (Intel bought the modem chipset maker Apple was using), and the company has been increasingly hedging its bets by using more than one major supplier. See the Samsung/TSMC split for an example. It gets you better competitive bids and prevents you from running into serious problems if a supplier falls short.

 

[Roland00Address]

That is a great bloomberg piece both the written piece but also the bloomberg video where an analyst talks about this in the bigger picture of whether it is going to help Intel much or hurt Qualcomm much.

So Apple sold 231 million iphones in 2015.

Verizon only works with Qualcomm so that is 20 to 25 million of iphones that intel can't take (sold 21 million in 2016 bloomberg expects 22 million in 2017 for verizon)

The China / Greater China models will also be Qualcomm only (Greater China being the countries of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan but other asian countries are in their own groups). I do not know how many of these units are expected to be sold for Apple reports revenue but not unit sales for individual countries. The problem with using revenue is that currency trading can cause phones to be "cheaper or more expensive" in a country due to the change of the dollar compared to the local currency. In addition we may know the average selling price of an iphone in the US but to my knowledge this has not been released for the Greater China iphone sales

Regardless Intel can take a sizable amount of this market.

How much does Qualcomm sell its MDM9635M? The MDM9635M is a 20nm part. Intel's upcoming 7360 is going to be built on 28nm TSMC process and not intels own 14nm foundries.

From what I heard the successor of 7360 which is XMM7480 will also be sourced at TSMC but I am not sure of this sentence.

 

[Roland00Address]

On another note what is happening with Aicha Evans? She is Intels VP who is now in charge of mobile, gaining this job only about a year ago, so much of the roadmap was set by her predecessors. Aka she did not make the mess since designing and shipping a chip is a several year process.

In April 1 2016 Bloomberg announced she was resigning from Intel. 3 weeks later Bloomberg states that CEO Brian Krzanich convinced her not never officially resign and to stay on the job.

So what the hell is happening here? A very bad april fools joke, or Aicha Evans wanting to bail?

Ironically she gave a nice interview to anadtech in april 2015 with Ian Cuttress and she has a gem of a quote.

I sure do hope so, otherwise we have a problem. I might not even be here! But our CEO was quite clear that he wants me to ship at least one of the SoFIA line in 14nm in 2016. He literally pointed me out during the presentation to tell me! But this is important, it is another foundation we have to establish.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9131/...ent-of-intels-communication-and-devices-group

Then in April 29, 2016 (aka 1 week after the CEO convinces her to stay), sofia is completely and utterly canceled as is willowtrail atom (tablets) and broxton atom (cellphones). Yet apollo lake (small ultraportables pcs and some detachable tablets) which share the same cpu as willowtrail and broxton (but not all the other stuff like gpu, die, etc) was retained.