Make Love, not war!
Well just few days ago, one would have thought, it’s the final
showdown between Apple and Qualcomm especially with
Apple having four more chip manufacturers at hand who also
stated that Qualcomm’s practices about license fees aren’t ok!
But with recent activites all seem to be forgotten now. Apple signed a 6-year-contract with a 2 year extension option to use Qualcomm’s modems in their products again. So what happened? Did it turn out that Apple could loose too much sueing the hell out of Qualcomm? Or did it turn out that the Intel modems for 5G aren’t as good as expected?
No one knows for sure what made Apple rethink it’s strategy. But we believe it’s because Intel won’t be able to supply 5G modems in a fashionable timespan. Maybe Apple wants to upgrade their iPhone line with 5G this autumn and Intel can’t supply the modems for this so far. It would then be wrong to wail on Qualcomm while they have the technology at hand. And while Apple still using Qualcomm modems for another 6 years, it is most likely that Apple is researching chip technology of their own they can then use and provide all technology highlights in one chip later on. One might even think, they’re using the Qualcomm joker for their less-cost line of iDevices.
So while it seems, the war between Apple and Qualcomm is now at an end, Intel stated that they won’t bring out 5G modems before 2020. This is unfortunate as Intel had a good point to reveal interesting 5G technology back in 2017. So for now we can just wait and see how All this will finally end up. The stocks of Qualcomm went up 20% while the stocks of Apple just made a small step upward by 0.5%.
Update April 17th, 2019 – 11:29
Intel has stated that it will no longer continue development on 5G modems and SoCs containing 5G technology after the settlement of Apple and Qualcomm has been publicated. So while there was hope of having a third competitor in the 5G environment, it’s just between Qualcomm and Huawei now. It’s not yet clear if Samsung will equip their Exynos SoCs with 5G technology or if 5G-enabled Samsung phones will be exclusively equipped with Qualcomm SoCs (Snapdragon)
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