After months of rumour, it has finally been confirmed that Apple will be acquiring Intel’s smartphone modem business. In a joint announcement made by both companies this morning, the deal which will see Apple as the majority shareholder of the business is valued at USD 1 billion (about RM 4.12 billion).
The official announcement has also revealed that around 2,200 of Intel employees will be moving to Apple as part of the acquisition. Not only that, Apple will also receive more than 17,000 patents from Intel which covers various segments of wireless technology, from protocols to model architecture.
Despite the acquisition, this doesn’t mean that Intel is completely moving away from modem developments though. The announcement stated that Intel has retained the option to develop modem for the non-smartphone segments such as PCs, IoT devices, and autonomous vehicles.
Through this acquisition, it is likely that Apple will no longer need to rely heavily on external vendors when it comes to cellular technology and modem supplies. That being said, we don’t expect in-house modems to appear immediately in Apple’s products especially given the fact that the company still has multi-year chipset supply agreement with Qualcomm.
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