Apple to ditch Qualcomm chips to Intel for its future iPhones
Apple might replace the essential component in its iPhones in the future. As we all know Apple iPhone 7 has two different chipset models – one is manufactured by Qualcomm and the other by Intel. The company is now willing to drop its Qualcomm-based chipsets from future iPhones amidst the lawsuits against each other.
According to 9to5Mac report, “KGI reports that Apple is set to rely on Intel as the exclusive supplier, amidst Apple’s ongoing legal battles with Qualcomm. KGI says Intel can meet Apple’s technical requirements and offers more competitive prices.”
Previously, KGI had reported that Apple might improve LTE speeds by supporting 4X4 MIMO chipsets by giving 30 per cent of the manufacturing orders to Qualcomm. Apple has a history of using different types of chipsets for same iPhone models, earlier they had been using Samsung and TSMC chipsets simultaneously.
They weren’t any major differences in the phones using those chipsets. Coming to these Qualcomm and Snapdragon chipsets, there have been reports stating that Qualcomm-based iPhones deliver fast and consistent when compared to Intel’s chipsets. There were also reports claimed by Apple, that they had to intentionally throttle down Qualcomm-based chipsets to match the Intel-based iPhones, which were slower in performance.
Aside from these performance issues, KGI says Qualcomm already has an advantage of having 5G chipsets ahead of Intel. This means iPhones might still stuck to 4G chipsets for a while in the future. As a result, Qualcomm is expected to commercialise its 5G chipsets in 2019-20, which can be a win-win situation for both companies.