It risks becoming Apple Inc.\u2019s signature bait-and-switch move.<\/p>\n
After years of developing technology with a supplier, the iPhone maker pulls the plug on the collaboration. It then buys up that business, which has limited prospects without Apple\u2019s custom, and continues the development in-house.<\/p>\n
It\u00a0happened last year\u00a0with Dialog Semiconductor Plc, the maker of power-management chips. This time it\u2019s the turn, remarkably, of Intel Corp., the world\u2019s second-largest semiconductor maker.<\/p>\n
Apple is in talks to acquire Intel\u2019s modem unit, technology website The Information\u00a0reported on Tuesday. The news comes just two months after Apple said it would\u00a0return to using those made\u00a0by\u00a0chipmaker rival Qualcomm Inc. \u2013\u00a0it exclusively used Intel modems in the most recent generation of iPhones.\u00a0The day after the Apple-Qualcomm rapprochement, Intel announced\u00a0its intention to\u00a0quit the mobile connectivity business.<\/p>\n
To be sure, Apple may be providing\u00a0something of a soft landing for Intel. The Santa Clara, California-based company has invested billions in developing modems since\u00a0acquiring the business\u00a0for $1.4 billion from Infineon AG in 2011. Its revenue from adjacent client computing products, which includes the modems business, jumped by 33% to $3.8 billion in 2018. That represented 5.4% of total revenue.<\/p>\n
Despite all its spending, Intel\u00a0still\u00a0lagged Qualcomm technologically. That in turn prompted tensions with Apple, according to The Information. Getting some remuneration for its pains will be a relief. It\u2019s reasonable to expect Apple to pay more than the $3 billion it spent acquiring Beats Electronics in 2014, its biggest-ever acquisition.<\/p>\n
But you can\u2019t blame Intel if it feels\u00a0a little used. As with many companies, Apple prefers to have a multi-supplier strategy where possible:\u00a0playing them off\u00a0against one another helps eke out lower component prices.<\/p>\n
Intel\u2019s modem presence gave Apple a powerful\u00a0bargaining chip, if you\u2019ll excuse the pun, in its two-year legal wrangle with Qualcomm over licensing fees. The moment that dispute was settled in April, letting the two firms resume their collaboration, Intel\u2019s strategic usefulness waned.<\/p>\n
It risks becoming Apple Inc.\u2019s signature bait-and-switch move.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":304556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[605,131,3524],"class_list":["post-309887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-apple","tag-intel","tag-qualcomm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}