According to CLSA Securities analyst Srini Pajjuri, Intel will be supplying Apple with nearly 30-40% of the total LTE modems that will be used inside the iPhone 7. The analyst citing “Asian supply chain checks” that Intel has managed to secure a “significant portion” of the LTE modems required by Apple for the iPhone 7.
Qualcomm will still remain the primary supplier of LTE modems for Apple, though it will see its share drop from 100 percent to around 60 percent. The move will negatively effect Qualcomm’s revenue, which is estimated to be about 4 percent. The company has been exclusively supplying modems to Apple for the iPhone since the last three years.
While Apple is looking to cut some reliance on Qualcomm, the company doesn’t plan to completely turn away from the chipmaker. On the contrary, the analyst believes that the company will “share shift back” to Qualcomm in 2017.
Intel reportedly has 1,000 or more employees working on preparing the Intel 7360 LTE modem for the iPhone 7 lineup. The company’s XM 7360 baseband, which is expected to show up inside the iPhone 7, supports LTE Cat. for a maximum download speed of 450Mbps and upload speeds of 100Mbps. The current generation iPhone feature a Qualcomm modem that support download and upload speeds of 300Mbps and 50Mbps.
In layman’s terms, that means the iPhone 7 could have even faster LTE speeds for browsing the web, downloading apps, streaming video, and other data-related tasks. Apple already improved LTE speeds on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus by adopting LTE-Advanced, which pushed downlink speeds up to a theoretical max of 300 Mbps.
Qualcomm has been Apple’s exclusive supplier of LTE modems for over three years, so it will really be surprising and shocking if Intel manages to supply Apple almost 40 percent of the LTE modems for the iPhone 7. While Intel modems have been used in some Android smartphones before, the company has never really come even remotely close to challenge Qualcomm’s monopoly in the baseband market
Source: NDTV
Intel to Produce ‘significant portion’ of iPhone 7