Apple completes purchase of Intel’s smartphone modem business

Back in July, Apple announced its plans to acquire Intel’s smartphone modem business for about $1 billion.

“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,” said Intel CEO Bob Swan during the announcement in July. “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.”

Today, Intel announced that it has completed the sale of the majority of its smartphone modem business to Apple.

“We’ve worked with Intel for many years and know this team shares Apple’s passion for designing technologies that deliver the world’s best experiences for our users,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. “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.”

Right now, Apple is relying on Qualcomm for 4G LTE and 5G modems for iPhones. With this acquisition, Apple is planning to develop its own smartphone modems for iPhone in 2021.

Source: Intel