Can Intel supply Apple's new iPhone baseband chip

Can Intel supply Apple's new iPhone baseband chip

on July 7, 2014, according to foreign media reports, last year, some media reported that Intel may regain Apple's order because it has formulated a good modem chip product release plan. Timothy arcuri, an analyst at Cowen chip business, an investment company, believes that Intel and Apple may be negotiating to provide baseband chips for the iPhone 6S (2015 iPhone)

iphone is Apple's largest cash cow, which means that its quality and performance are crucial. However, it is also important to maintain a satisfactory cost structure and ensure high profitability

until recently, apple did not find a second baseband chip supplier other than Qualcomm. The partnership between apple and Qualcomm seems unbreakable, but there is no doubt that having a second supplier will at least enable apple to strive for greater price concessions in its negotiations with Qualcomm

in this year's Intel 4, according to the experimental environment, it can be divided into: room temperature fatigue experiment, low temperature fatigue experiment, high temperature fatigue experiment, thermal fatigue experiment, corrosion fatigue experiment, contact fatigue experiment, fretting wear fatigue experiment, etc; Intel showed a very vague product release plan for independent modem chips at the developer forum

obviously, Intel plans to launch a new generation of LTE advanced modem chips in 2015. Intel's new generation modem chip will support category 7 LTE advanced, which makes it functionally equivalent to the mdm9x35 module in Qualcomm snapdragon 808/810 chip, which is inconsistent with the reproduction of environmental conditions

one of the most important uses of intelligence is surfing. When intelligent, the modem needs to complete a lot of work in order to meet the increasingly high requirements of automotive users. This means that in order to extend the battery life, modem chips need to be of different shapes and sizes, and energy efficiency should be improved as much as possible. The progress of chip manufacturing technology helps to improve energy efficiency

if the 14nm manufacturing process is adopted, Intel's latest XMM 7260 modem will have very satisfactory performance and energy saving characteristics. If Qualcomm fails to switch independent modem chips to 16 FinFET process in the second and third quarters, Intel will gain a substantial advantage in energy consumption

if Apple wants to choose Intel as the baseband chip supplier, Intel needs to have certain advantages. It is a huge victory for apple to produce an independent baseband chip with a 14 nm process for the 2015 iPhone

however, given that at least one leaked product release plan claims that Intel's new generation modem chips are still manufactured using the 28nm process, which is basically equivalent to the mdm9x35 recently released by Qualcomm, it is wise not to expect too much from Intel to supply baseband chips to apple