Apple has just announced something that was already reported earlier. The announcement is that Apple is officially acquiring the smartphone modem division of Intel. The company claims that the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business will be acquired. As a part of this acquisition, Apple will also get 2200 Intel employees due to this deal. It is estimated that this deal from Apple will cost them around $1 Billion. However, Apple will be acquiring a majority of Intel’s patents in this process too.
Therefore, Apple will have more than 17,000 patents to its name once the deal is completed. These patents are just for the wireless technology alone and Apple holds several other patents too. Apple also says that the deal should be closed by the end of 2019 pending regulatory approval.
However, Intel will still continue making modems for non-smartphone products even after the acquisition which includes PCs, Laptops and Smart home devices. In a statement, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies, Johny Srouji said:
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.
Now, one of the most interesting things that could happen with this deal is 5G support. After this acquisition, Apple will be able to include 5G modems on their smartphones that much faster. This means that we are most likely to see at least some, if not all, Apple products with 5G support next year.
Previously, Apple used Qualcomm modems inside their smartphones but they have had a series of legal disputes. Therefore, this is also a move by Apple to avoid dealing with Qualcomm as much as possible. For this reason, iPhones from last year also had Intel modems inside them.