Interesting, Apple could do some interesting things with this. The qualcomm situation has resulted in a lot of stagnation in our industry. Companies like Apple are forced to work with them. But given their track record as being aggressive on the IP front (both sides), they have to spend a lot of effort engineering around this stuff. Companies like Intel, Qualcomm, Nokia own a lot of these patents and Apple has been paying them off for as long as the iPhone has been around.
To this day there's not a single Apple laptop that ships with built in 4G modems even though that would make sense from a functional point of view. I suspect the reason is not technical but related to IP and pushback from other players in the ecosystem (e.g. operators). As soon as you add 4G/5G to the mix, there are suddenly a lot of sneaky patents that come into play.
At least you can't tell me that nobody in Apple pondered the question "hmm I wonder which of our Mac Book Air customers would not like to be connected anywhere on this planet". The reason this is not a feature is that it would add a lot of cost related to patents and IP licensing. This deal might fix that partially. Software sims have been similarly difficult for the same reasons and another thing Apple has been pushing on lately.
Apple doing this stuff in house means they can push harder on this front.
I don't understand why it could drastically increase the price of a Macbook. I can buy a ThinkPad or a Dell Latitude/Precision with a Sierra Wireless 4G M.2 card for only an extra $2-300, basically the price of the card if you were to buy it separately. Older generations of ThinkPads could also have a 4G M.2 card easily added after purchase because the antennas were built-in from the factory (did this with my X260).
I suppose (guessing) if this was a SoC and there were no standard M.2 slots, then I guess I could see why Qualcomm would want some extra royalties in that case.
Even with Apple margins, the cellular radio adds like $150 to an iPad.
The technical issues are accommodating it with the design decisions made. Personally, I think it’s a smarter decision to make the iPhone/iPad pairing model low friction, as Apple has.
This is also a small/minority use case. LTE laptops are a very small product category — nobody wants to add a cellular plan. This feature will only matter if carriers start killing cable with millimeter wave 5G.
How are carriers going to kill cable with 5G? Won't they still want to charge $10/Gb? If that's the case, 4G is already faster than a lot of people's current connection at $50. If you use more than 5 Gb per month, it wouldn't make sense to go full mobile.
For example, 30 minutes of TV every other day is already pushing 8 Gb...
When there are competitive spirits at work, prices magically drop. I pay Spectrum $69 for 100/5 service in my city, which has no other options. My brother pays $45 for 300/30 service 4 miles away in a suburb where Verizon has chosen to compete as there are fewer poor people.
Right now there's a 5G land-grab going on, with hundreds of millimeter-band 5G poles being dumped everywhere. I assume that's for a wireless fixed ISP service, as it doesn't add value for normal mobile service.
There is at least $40 worth of BOM cost from additional Antenna, baseband Modem and other RF Related Component. And it is not only Qualcomm which collect royalty on LTE, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE and many others all collect royalty.
I do remember the royalty fees for Non-Smartphone ( Or Devices with only Data line ) were cheaper. But together it would still easily be $30+.
Theres really no great need in 4g for macbooks? I mean you can activate your wifis hotspot with handoff directly from your macbook without ever touching your iphone.
assuming you have an iphone, and it has plenty of battery...at one point after using the hotspot for a while my iphone showed a temperature warning, and I had to wait for it to cool off before I could use it again.
Having the laptop battery and cooling would be much better
Probably because you're close to whatever tower it's connecting to and the radio bits are not having to spend a bunch of energy screaming at the top of their lungs to be heard by the tower.
Even plastic clad android phones will get hot if you try and make a long phone call from BFE.
You could argue that perhaps the computer shouldn't have built in WiFi either - after all, it could tether to a phone (via a cable or Bluetooth) to use wi-fi.
Except WiFi modems are cheap because there is lots of competition and most of the patents are easy to license, so everything has WiFi now.
For me to have 4G access, I need to connect to a network, and for that I need to pay. I currently do this through my phone which I need to be connected when there is no wifi more than my laptop. Is the price of 4G access low enough to have this on my laptop in addition to my phone? Not currently.
Any phone can do that, not only iPhones. How often are you on the move without a phone?
Also the battery argument is not so definitive since a laptop on 4G/5G would also consume battery. If you can connect your laptop to a wall outlet you can connect your phone too.
(Green and blue boards tend to be for production-ready prototypes, red is fairly hacked together.)
I believe the objections are 50:50 software-related and battery. How do you set suitable data usage thresholds on a Mac which is running over a 3/4/5G LTE network? The thermal performance of MacBook Pro is already weak at the high end and battery life suffers.
I would be surprised if, when Apple switches to its own power efficient chipset in its portable Mac line, they don't offer a BTO option which includes cellular capabilities through a built-in SIM.
It’s not hard to write something that kills an interface shortly after the transmitted data crosses a threshold (I’ve done it multiple times for myself.) I’m still surprised apple has refused to add this to any of their OSes.
Or if you don't have much battery, you can kill two birds with one stone by plugging the phone into the laptop and tethering over USB while charging it.
> The reason this is not a feature is that it would add a lot of cost related to patents and IP licensing.
Looking at the numbers here(1), this is not right. They sold ~46 millions iPhones, ~9 millions iPads for a rounded total of ~50 millions devices with a GSM modem. Meanwhile, they "only" sold ~5 millions Macs, which include all the laptops and desktop offerings. Therefore, adding a GSM device to all their mobile offerings would only mean ~10% increase in number of modems (assuming all of those 5 millions macs are actually laptops). I would "blame" the lack of such an offering on the same reason they don't offer many different ports, like headphones, non usbc usb, hdmi etc.
You realize that qualcomm's ridiculous licensing terms entitles them to a percentage of the sales price of the end device, right? At $2-3k per laptop that's not exactly chump change and would likely lead to a noticeable price increase on a laptop that's already considered "overpriced" by the general public.
Quote:
We broadly
provide per unit royalty caps that apply to certain categories of complete wireless devices, namely smartphones, tablets and laptops, which effectively
provide for a maximum royalty amount per device.
Yet they keep all their licensing deals a secret so that statement means exactly nothing. That cap could be $20k for all we know. Furthermore it's negotiated per oem and at their discretion.
No, I'm sure you're not the only one who has thought this. However, the apparent irony disappears quite readily when you examine the differences, the most important of which:
If you want a laptop but don't want to pay Apple prices, you can buy a laptop from Lenovo/Dell/Asus/you get the point.
If you want to play in the 4G/5G space you have to license Qualcomm's IP. They've been pretty aggressive about enforcing this. So aggressive in fact that they've been found guilty of anti-competitive behaviour by a US judge (in a case brought by the FTC), as well as by the EU (twice).
So yeah, in the face of that, it's difficult to argue that Apple's position - of selling premium devices in a competitive market - is in any way similar to Qualcomm's predatory tactics.
Now if you want to talk about the App Store on the other hand...
I think you under-appreciate how stupendously expensive it is to settle patent disputes. There's no question that 4G would have been useful in laptops and given that Apple sells them at a premium, even small increases in market share are very lucrative. The reason they didn't was cost and mitigating risks infringing on relevant patents. For a phone this is essential and not optional, for a laptop this isn't the case.
If I remember correctly the price of the Qualcom "essentials" patents is based on the price of the whole device. So in that regard it would make sense to avoid laptops since there are smaller margins and the price tag is also higher.
Quote: We broadly provide per unit royalty caps that apply to certain categories of complete wireless devices, namely smartphones, tablets and laptops, which effectively provide for a maximum royalty amount per device.
> I think you under-appreciate how stupendously expensive it is to settle patent disputes.
I'm arguing that they already solved this issue, since they are selling so many devices with GSM modems. Unless you can provide documentation demonstrating otherwise, I am not going to believe their agreement is to use GSM modems only on iPhones and these particular models of iPads, but is to use GSM modems on whatever devices they see fit. I don't think Apple are that stupid to limit themselves like that.
It's very unlike Apple to deliberately ignore an opportunity to sell a bit of convenience as a premium. Lots of ipad owners own iphones and yet buy the ipad with a 4G modem that they technically don't need. An always on Mac Book Air that "just works" is such an obvious thing to do given the target demographic of people using this on the go, that there must be another reason than "we already sell iphones/ipads". I don't buy the "users don't need this argument" since, I see way too many people thethering their macs with separate access points that are definitely not their phone for this not to be a thing at least.
The royalty are based on a percentage of the Wholesale price of Laptop, and since Apple's Laptop are on the higher end, which means their royalty will be higher.
Not to mention Smartphone, Tablet, and Other devices each have different royalty rate. Which means you cant use the same terms for your iPhone and use those for your iCars.
The irony that Apple really hate paying that royalty but expect App developers to do the exact same.
Here's a fun anecdotal story. Me and my partner both have iPhone 7+ devices and the same carrier. I get 2 bars of 4G signal and she gets none inside our apartment. She has to walk outside to take calls. I couldn't understand how this was possible but after some research I discovered that my iPhone has a Qualcomm modem and hers has an Intel modem.
Say what you want about Qualcomm but they make the best modem in the business. The reason I have not upgraded is quite simply because Apple no longer make a phone with a Qualcomm modem and I won't be able to get signal where I live.
Obviously, i'm an edge case. But for the average person paying $1500 for the "Best smartphone in the world" it sure seems crazy that they're also getting the worst modem in the world packaged inside it so Apple can save a few dollars on the cost of the unit.
> it sure seems crazy that they're also getting the worst modem in the world packaged inside it so Apple can save a few dollars on the cost of the unit.
A few dollars? Qualcomm skins you for all you are worth. Yeah, the actual chip is few bucks more, but the support framework for that chip is mega $$$. Want to debug the modem? Looks like you need Qualcomm's proprietary debug tool QXDM! That'll be $25K per year per seat. Oh and if you want their support (so you aren't flailing around with their gigabytes of generated logs) be prepared for another $200k annual support subscription per team. Want a certain document so you can figure it out yourself? $$$.
As developers we feel you but to the original point, Apple is already paying that and is basically A/B testing how much pain consumers can take. All at a premium consumer price.
>A few dollars? Qualcomm skins you for all you are worth.
And Amortised over 200M annual iPhone unit shipment? That would be less than a dollar per unit. Not to mention it is highly unlikely Apple paid anywhere close to those prices.
This worries me. Wouldn't this leave us with Qualcomm once again the only manafacturer of cellular modems for everyone else? I somehow doubt Apple would keep supplying the Intel parts to any other OEMs.
> Wouldn't this leave us with Qualcomm once again the only manafacturer of cellular modems for everyone else? I somehow doubt Apple would keep supplying the Intel parts to any other OEMs.
This could go either way.
Apple is clearly doing this because they want to give Qualcomm the finger. But if they really want to do that then they do sell parts to any other OEM.
Most of the devices these radios go in don't actually compete with Apple products. The largest volume is in low end phones and things with radios that aren't even phones, like base stations and smart meters. Apple could sell the chips for commodity prices and make a bit of profit for itself while still undercutting Qualcomm and making them hurt bad in the volume segment of the market where Apple doesn't otherwise compete but where Qualcomm makes a lot of its money.
>Apple could sell the chips for commodity prices and make a bit of profit for itself
Never gonna happen. You can't just sell the chips, you also need to provide a TON of support to your customers and integrators and in the semiconductor business that's way too much of a hassle for Apple to be worth it. They have much bigger fish to fry.
From what I hear about Qualcomm, theres enough companies that would be willing to jump through the hoops to avoid them, as Apple themselves did Intel.
They could always set up a joint venture, Apple brings the IP. The partner does the day to day stuff. It doesn't make a lot of sense to be sitting on top of IP and R&D that could be amortised over a much larger number of units.
Apple seems like they could be vindictive enough to get into the business of selling their own modems, and to do so at prices that undercut Qualcomm, despite low cost hardware being way outside of their normal business model. Overall, I'd support that.
Nobody except Apple bought the Intel parts anyway (possibly because they were absolute flaming garbage relative to Qualcomm’s products), which is why we’re in this position in the first place.
I have an iPhone with an Intel modem and can confirm: it is flaming garbage. It's fine in good service areas but in the event of subpar service it basically just craps out entirely. Qualcomm modems seem to handle the same areas just fine.
IIRC that deal was Ericsson fabbing their LTE & 5G basestations on Intel's 10nm process, but Intel's 10nm process can't produce large working chips in volume (and likely never will), which has kneecapped Ericsson as a cellular vendor.
In mergers/acquisitions like this, what used to happen is that the FTC/etc would require that they continue to sell or support all comers for some period of time.
For example, when Google bought ITA, ITA was required to continue licensing the software on "commercially reasonable terms" to other people.
>Wouldn't this leave us with Qualcomm once again the only manafacturer of cellular modems for everyone else?
Does it matter?
1. Intel aren't selling their modem to anyone else anyway.
2. MediaTek Still supplies Discrete Modem.
3. Apple, Huawei, Samsung are already 50%+ of the market.
With Xiaomi, BBK ( Vivo OnePlus Oppo ) going to have their own / shared Modem solution in a few years time. Which combined to ~20% market. There isn't that much of a market left for players other than Qualcomm and Mediatek.
Everyone already has to pay a % of the end device whether or not they use Qualcomm parts, regardless of the cost of the device. Because Qualcomm is only interested in “standards” where they are the only provider so get to cut anyone who doesn’t accept their novel interpretation of FRAND
Wouldn't this then be a reason for a regulator to block a deal like this? Would Apple have to 'promise' to at least try and sell chips to other OEMs in order to avoid leaving others in a monopoly situation with Qualcomm?
I honestly don't know what's better: screwing everyone altogether + Intel job losses, or screwing everyone except another already big fish?
A better alternative would be for another interested buyer to appear at the negotiating table, presumably that would require the price to somehow magically come down.
Edit: @DannyBee above has already helpfully commented that the FTC has previously required that the buyer continues to sell to / support customers for some time period following the purchase.
As others pointed out, there are other modem manufactures. The interesting bit is whether or not Apple would allow other manufacturers to buy their modems.
I don't think it makes a ton of sense for Apple to resell their A-series CPUs, but 4G modems is a little different, they're more generic. If they manage to make good modems why wouldn't they sell them to others? The people buying iPhones won't switch to an Android device, just because it's the same modem.
If apple buys the modem division, they'll be integrating the modem into the SoC. It will be an advanced process node and they won't be scared of using more silicon area to get more performance. By being on the same SoC, they might combine the application and baseband CPU's into one too using something like trustzone.
Cheapo android handset makers wouldn't be able to afford the resulting silicon - it'll be too expensive due to the large area. It'll also likely diverge from the way everyone else builds modems - no more AT commands!
Intel's modem division was not exactly Intel, it was the modem business unit they bought from Infineon Semiconductors of Germany in 2011.
Having worked in the semiconductor business in Germany and having friends who worked at Infineon there, the cause would be the corporate culture that rewards incompetent management riding the gravy train(old boys club) instead of engineering effort and playing the politics game is the only way to move up, even though lots of engineers there are very talented people.
This, coupled with Intel's own innovation culture that fails at anything that doesn't involve milking the X86 resulted in a dumpster fire.
Under Apple, these same engineers could probably ship something competitive if Apple plays their cards right.
It's too bad anything Apple manufactures is effectively taken completely off the market unless you are interested in buying the thing packaged inside of extremely expensive form factor.
Personally I suggest people do read the actual 233 page report, It is actually an easy read. I come to a vastly different conclusion to mainstream media including Ars, at least someone shares the same opinion [1] as I do.
One needs to support all existing standards since 5G availability is limited in the world. This low power mixed circuit masterpiece requires really specific knowledge and must find balance between low power and good connectivity. It’s not trivial. Otherwise we would have couple startups every year trying to compete against Qualcomm. Last but not least: this matter involves thousands patents making it game for companies with very deep pockets only.
The hardest part is to get power management right. Anyone can build a modem that "works", but nobody other than Qualcomm, (and I really mean that), has gotten power management right.
What I mean is that even today, if you buy a 4G enabled phone not powered by Qualcomm, your battery will drain in a few hours and you'll be left with a dead brick for the rest of the day.
Source: I spent years building 3G and 4G PHY chips at various QC competitors that have all since folded up or have been bought and merged into other teams.
>What I mean is that even today, if you buy a 4G enabled phone not powered by Qualcomm, your battery will drain in a few hours and you'll be left with a dead brick for the rest of the day.
I had an iPhone 7 with an intel modem (AT&T iPhone) for 3 years. The battery did not die in 4 hours.
Miniaturized, high frequency, low-power, high bandwidth, radio modems to be exact - supporting multiple complex protocols. In real-time. Meaning it is all done in hardware, although firmware does some management stuff. It's about as hard as silicon engineering gets.
Only PHY is in hardware, indeed with firmware control.
Then, the protocol stacks on top of that are enormous and complex. The software is very large.
Broadcom also tried and failed because they underestimated the task, IMO.
Those who can/could make it happen are those who are willing to invest massively over many years and, ideally who have a sure customer. E.g. Huawei who is willing to take the long view and who ships hundreds of millions of phones.
Apple’s quarterly revenue is larger than Qualcomm’s market cap. This is clearly about more than the money for them. I wouldn’t be shocked if they spent 10bn and poached away half of Qualcomm’s best engineers. They’ve already been on a hiring spree and opened a pretty nice office down in San Diego.
yup. Office is literally 5 minutes away from from Qualcomm, so no problems with the commute, and I'm sure they would be willing to pay much more than Qualcomm. Only thing is the patents. Qualcomms real value is in the crazy amount of R&D they do, and the patents they have to show for it.
every now and then i see somebody claiming to know more and hinting at deeper things going on with mobile modems, basebands, gsm.
then they can‘t say anything because of nda. or the gsm standard manual costs hundreds of dollars.
my tin foil hat is glowing, i‘m telling you. we already know that gsm encryption is a joke. i don‘t want to imagine what‘s going on inside all those closed-source baseband firmwares. it creeps me out.
Part of the reason is that Intel tried to aquire their way into this market. So they bought Infineon - which let's face it, Infineon wouldn't have sold if it was going well. So they bought the distant second place in the modem market in 2011 and started work on 4G, with the intention of catching up.
The only real product success they had was getting Apple for 4G and we can quite clearly see that as more of a strategic move by Apple against Qualcomm. Over that period there were numerous issues about Intel chips not being as high performance or low power as Qualcomm - which we'd hardly find surprising.
So there's that element to it, but the second element is that Intel has a fantastic reputation for destroying the businesses they acquire. Essentially what happens is that once they acquire a business they do a number of things:
1. They take a long time to perform these acquisitions. The timeline from first hints of acquisition to close can be years. So the engineering organisation of the company being acquired starts to hide problems because they fear it will endanger the acquisition. So you have a steady build up of issues that will overflow on day 1 after the deal closes.
2. They massively invest. This means massively increasing the cost structure of the acquired company, they do this whilst setting much higher targets to justify the investment. But there's two problems: The new employees take a long time to bring up to speed, and because Intel is constantly re-prioritizing you have existing engineers in Intel who are trying to move across into any role available. Suddenly you have a team of engineers in Folsom who basically have no work to do and so they're dumped into the new growth area (because as we all know, engineers are fungible commodities). The acquired company needs to figure how the hell these engineers are going to contribute.
3. They massively increase expectations. That investment has to pay off, so they set way higher new goals - and not "In 5 years time you need X revenue" more "This year you need 30% revenue increase". This immediately puts the new business in panic mode - EOLing products and doing sales tricks to invent revenue to hit the target. Year 2, all the sales guys know they pumped year 1's numbers to hit their targets so the good sales guys jump ship -either into different parts of Intel or entirely out of the company.
4. They find SYNERGY. What that means is every other branch of Intel will turn up and start either insisting you use their technology (guess what: You're using the Intel Fab now despite the fact we can't deliver on 10nm). Because Intel is so much larger than the companies they acquire your little business group suddenly has thousands of people coming to you saying "How about you work on this" or "Our client needs this let's bundle these products". That creates massive attrition on your core business.
5. They scale up: Intel is such a big company they literally can't chase small revenue - it would eat them up in COGS to sell $1m at a time. So very quickly the acquired business starts to lose its small customers that make up the revenue that made the business attractive in the first place.
So in the end: You've alienated all your customers, you've thrown your engineering organisation into dis-array, you've set ridiculous targets, and you're now owned by a company that's perfectly willing 5-10 years down the road to pull the plug on the entire sector you're working in. Hey presto: They 10 year cycle from Acquisition to Spin-off. Say hello to the boys at McAfee!
The "synergy" stuff is so true! I talked with a colleague who interned at Intel doing HDL development for networking. Guess what - when Intel acquired Altera they asked each division to evaluate using FPGAs in their products.
also, are they even really "modems"? I know that "cable modems" are really routers… surely cellular modems aren't all bzzzt-brrzzt-bing-bong-bing-bong like my 90's Hayes 1200baud.
Yes they are. Modem is an abbreviation for MOdulator-DEModulator which is what they do, they modulate and demodulate radio signals to digital and vice versa.
I don’t think apple has a particularly bad track record with abusing patents... they’ve used them in big ip battles with major competitors who also used patents against them, never to crush small innovators that I am aware of.
I think they are quite infamous in this regard, like going after rounded corners, "slide to unlock" and similar trivial ideas that not only have prior art, but shouldn't be even patentable to being with. So I don't have any trust in them not abusing any new patents.
Small innovators are often simply too worried to enter some markets due to this. Because they don't have the arsenal of big competitors to fend off patent threats.
Do you remember the early samsung galaxy phones? They were blatant ripoffs of all the original design apple was doing in the phone space. From the basic form factor down to small interactions. You can argue that slide-to-unlock should not be patentable (I agree) but if it is, using it to deter your largest competitor from cloning your product is actually what patents are supposed to be for... i.e. come up with your own solution don’t copy mine.
Whether they were a rip off or not, I won't argue (I use neither Samsung, nor Apple and I don't see such style aspects to be a required matter of exclusivity). But Apple didn't hesitate to attack using trivial (which means invalid) patents like that. The end doesn't justify the means. Just because they thought they were ripped off, doesn't excuse their abuse of the broken patent system.
Next thing they can imagine they are being ripped off by some competitor, because they don't like the color of some device or what not. So why should anyone trust them not to do abuse the patent system, just because they can.
I.e. I see any such abusive company arming themselves with even more patents like a very negative development.
I guess what I’m saying is your problem seems to be a problem with the issuing of trivial patents. Calling a company abusive because they use their patents to protect their position is like calling a scorpion abusive because it stings.
No, they don't have an excuse of using that weapon, just because the system is broken enough to arm them with it. Surely, the system needs fixing. But foul actors are sill foul regardless. That's pretty self explanatory.
Intel seems to become pointless in near future, AMD is cutting fast into desktop and server markets, Apple makes its own mobile chips and rest of the industry buys quallcoms chips. Soon Apple may drop Intel altogether from its laptops, and PC industry might follow the suite. What will Intel be doing in near future is quite worrisome. Intel should have pursued modem chips more effectively but their multi million dollar pay checks have to come from somewhere so they refuse to drop prices in any segment. Is Intel planning to shut shop in a few yrs?
Apple sued Qualcomm to drop their prices and used Intel to keep them in check. After their settlement/agreement with Qualcomm, they started using Qualcomm and dropped Intel and then Intel quit the smartphone chip business. Now theyre planning to buy Intel's smartphone SoC business for a fraction of the money they would've paid before.
Based on everything I've read, your comment is a complete distortion of what actually happened.
Apple really wanted Intel to provide their chips, to the point of shipping a phone with dual Intel-Qualcomm modems, with the Qualcomm one throttled because Intel couldn't match its speed. Intel just wasn't able to make their modem business work, after years of work and at least four (!) acquisitions of modem makers.
Apple had no choice but to go back to Qualcomm if it wanted to sell phones.
Intel was dropped because they weren’t competitive, not because of some long con to lower acquisition price. Apple really didn’t want to work with Qualcomm again.
They wanted to move away from Qualcomm because they were taking the piss. The problem was that the Intel chips were never that good so the were forced to settle with Qualcomm. It's a story of Intel being useless rather than Apple being evil.
How is it unethical? If you live in a village with two bakeries and one, your favorite, starts charging you double for their delicious bread, you then start shopping at the other one who’s bread is terrible, but suitable enough. Now, faced with competition, your favorite bakery lowers their price, so you go back to your favorite.
Now, the second bakery is hanging on by a thread because you aren’t buying his bad bread. He decides to get out of the bakery business so he can use the money to invest in his roofing business instead. You see an opportunity to make even better bread than the best bakery, so you agree to buy the second bakery.
Nothing unethical at all there. That’s exactly how free markets are supposed to work. The key point is that nobody forced Intel to make bad modems and nobody should be obligated to pay Qualcomm’s high prices. It isn’t Apple’s fault that Intel modems weren’t that good. It isn’t Apple’s fault they want to build something better than other market participants are currently providing.
That isn’t really fair to Apple (or long game, Intel) though. That basically says that it is in Apple’s best interest to never deal with Intel because in doing so, Intel becomes dependent upon them. If they would’ve remained with Qualcomm from day one, Intel’s shortcomings in mobile (iirc, Intel and Windows Phone tried to pair up a bit) could never be blamed on Apple.
That arrangement may work totally for Qualcomm and somewhat for Apple, but it’d be devastating for Intel.
I think the real risk here is Apple sucking the profitability out of the high end modem business. Qualcomm makes most of their high end modem money out of Apple. The other flagship Android phone makers may not be a big enough market to justify Qualcomm developing the very costly high end modems they need. That could leave Apple as the only manufacturer with the best modems.
We’re at least a few years away from that possibility, especially given the poor state of the Intel modem technology, but if Apple can pull this off they’ll have yet another technological exclusive differentiating feature. This time, one truly central to the platform technology.
Qualcomm has prevented 20 years worth of upstarts from even attempting to enter the high-end modem business. There isn't a market for high-end modems, there's only Qualcomm.
At this point, nuking Qualcomm's profitability seems like the only reasonable thing left to try.
So now instead of Qualcomm monopolising high end modems in phones, we may well end up in a situation where Apple will. Wonderful. High fives all round.
For one thing, Qualcomm isn't going to be ditching the modem business; they just aren't allowed to be predatory monopolists on it anymore.
For another, because Qualcomm isn't allowed to use the anticompetitive tactics they've used in the past, it will now be possible for someone else to break into that market. It'll take a lot of time, money, and effort, to be sure, but if someone else can get modems working even in the same quality ballpark as Qualcomm's, they'll have a guaranteed revenue stream from people who would be overjoyed to stick it to Qualcomm.
And, of course, at this point, there's no guarantee that Apple will be making modems for anyone but themselves.
The thing is that the entire high end Android market is much smaller than the iPhone market. Qualcomm won’t have any incentive to invest a lot of money in high end modems if Apple is not a customer. You’re seeing the same thing on a much smaller scale play out in the wearables market. The only company producing enough watches to make an investment in the processors required is Apple.
Of course Apple isn’t going to make modems for anyone but themselves.
For a long time, Apple's modems were decidedly inferiour, in fact intentionally throttled, so the 'central competitive advantage' was very much on the high-end Android side. Nobody cared.
I don't think this would be any different if Apple one ever seizes the advantage. Ultimately, no one really gets these speeds anyway due to the data carriers.
To this day there's not a single Apple laptop that ships with built in 4G modems even though that would make sense from a functional point of view. I suspect the reason is not technical but related to IP and pushback from other players in the ecosystem (e.g. operators). As soon as you add 4G/5G to the mix, there are suddenly a lot of sneaky patents that come into play.
At least you can't tell me that nobody in Apple pondered the question "hmm I wonder which of our Mac Book Air customers would not like to be connected anywhere on this planet". The reason this is not a feature is that it would add a lot of cost related to patents and IP licensing. This deal might fix that partially. Software sims have been similarly difficult for the same reasons and another thing Apple has been pushing on lately.
Apple doing this stuff in house means they can push harder on this front.