Apple confirms that it will acquire most of Intel’s smartphone modem business

Apple has introduced that it plans to purchase the “majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business,” following current rumors to that impact.

The deal will value Apple about one billion {dollars}, and may shut within the fourth quarter of this yr, topic to regulatory approval. For the value, Apple will acquire roughly 2,200 Intel workers together with mental property, tools, and leases.

The deal will tremendously increase Apple’s patent portfolio, taking the corporate to over 17,000 patents associated to present and future wi-fi know-how.

Apple is simply buying Intel’s smartphone modem business, nevertheless. Intel will nonetheless be capable of develop modems for non-smartphone functions like PCs, good vehicles, or IoT functions. 

Intel CEO Bob Swan painted this as a win for its firm. “This agreement enables us to focus on developing technology for the 5G network while retaining critical intellectual property and modem technology that our team has created. We have long respected Apple and we’re confident they provide the right environment for this talented team and these important assets moving forward. We’re looking forward to putting our full effort into 5G where it most closely aligns with the needs of our global customer base, including network operators, telecommunications equipment manufacturers and cloud service providers.”

Apple’s senior VP of Hardware Technologies, Johny Srouji, is quoted as saying, “Apple is excited to have so many excellent engineers join our growing cellular technologies group, and know they’ll thrive in Apple’s creative and dynamic environment. They, together with our significant acquisition of innovative IP, will help expedite our development on future products and allow Apple to further differentiate moving forward.”

While that is excellent news for Apple’s plans to construct its personal mobile modems for iPhones and iPads, it doesn’t imply we should always anticipate Apple-designed modems in them quickly. Apple just lately settled its longstanding feud with Qualcomm, and as half of the settlement, agreed to a six-year chip licensing deal, together with a “multiyear chipset licensing agreement.” It’s doable that Apple might begin to present some modems for some of its merchandise, however the firm is locked into shopping for Qualcomm modems for a number of years.