With there being some bad blood between Apple and Qualcomm, it did not come as a surprise to learn that Apple might be looking to source certain components from other companies. After all that’s one of the reasons why Apple turned to TSMC for their chipset production instead of Samsung, and why Apple was also rumored to be looking at LG for OLEDs.
Unfortunately it seems that Apple will not be able to ditch Qualcomm entirely, at least not anytime soon. According to report from Fast Company, it has been reported that Apple is expected to continue sourcing from Qualcomm for 2018’s iPhones. The report claims that Apple will get 70% of the modem chips from Intel, which means that the remaining 30% will come from Qualcomm.
The reason Intel isn’t getting the full 100% is because the company will be fabricating its own modem chips using the 14nm process this year (prior to that Intel used TSMC to manufacture their chips), and apparently Apple wants to see how well Intel can fulfill this year’s orders before working with them exclusively. However production isn’t going so great right now as Fast Company’s sources claim that Intel’s yield rates aren’t what the company had expected and that only half of what has been made is kept.
However Intel believes they’ll be able to sort out the issue before kicking things into high gear come June/July later this year. If all goes according to plan, it is said that Intel could receive 100% of the orders next year, which hopefully will yield modems with 5G capabilities.