Roger Fingas
Intel will reportedly supply up to half of the cellular modem chips being used in Apple's "iPhone 7" and "7 Plus," expected to ship in September.
Although Intel will package the chips itself, it will be up to TSMC and King Yuan Electronics to actually manufacture them, sources explained to DigiTimes. The people didn't say who would be supply the rest of the modems, but that would presumably be Qualcomm, Apple's current partner.
Past rumors have suggested that Intel was looking to step into the Apple supply chain this year. Indeed, an October report claimed that Apple sent an engineering team to help optimize Intel's 7360 LTE modem.
That and DigiTimes's claim could match recent statements by Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf, who in April said he was "assuming" a major client would be turning modem orders over to another firm. Apple and Samsung are Qualcomm's two biggest clients, but Samsung already uses multiple modem suppliers.
End users are unlikely to notice any difference between an Intel modem or one made by Qualcomm. Apple, though, may have work to do to ensure there's no substantial difference in terms of power consumption or network performance.
On Tuesday DigiTimes noted that Apple's suppliers are on track to ship "iPhone 7" models by the end of the third quarter. Assembly partners are said to include Foxconn, Pegatron, and Wistron, the last not having made any iPhones since the iPhone 5c.
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Wesley Hilliard
AppleInsider Staff
Andrew Orr
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William Gallagher
19 Comments
You guys need to stop using that picture. It looks gross..
Users will find a reason to complain about this. Look no further than the last release with two separate fabs of the A9. Users were first upset when they found they received the TSMC chip over the Samsung. Then, days later there was the report that the TSMC chip under certain conditions may perform slightly better than the Samsung chip. The boards were filled with dejected users, and threats of returns.
Despite a few naysayers, this continues to gain credibility. I imagine that Intel continues to attempt to keep Apple as a customer, and is trying to gain more of their business
Nothing surprising. Intel(with Apple engineers) would not work relentlessly on modem chip for over last 2 years if Apple had no intention to use in near future iphone/ipad. I thought it would be in iphone SE but seems probably in iphone 7, time is right for the intel modem chip introduction. Good for Intel more revenue and Apple for diversifying modem chip set less dependent on Qualcomm.