Apple conformed Thursday to pay US$1 billion to purchase the majority of Intel's smartphone modem business, a move giving the iPhone maker more control over its supply chain. Included in the deal, some 2,200 Intel employees will join Apple, which will acquire intellectual property, equipment and leases.
Johny Srouji, Apple's senior vice-president of hardware technologies, suggested the move 'will help expedite our development on future products and allow Apple to further differentiate moving forward.' Intel chief executive Bob Swan said the deal 'enables us to focus on developing technology for the 5G network while retaining critical intellectual property and modem technology that our team has created.'
Apple has been investing in its very own mobile chips to crank up performance and features in its devices and scale down its dependency on sector leader Qualcomm.
Intel earlier on this year released it was leaving initiatives to play competitively with modem chips for smartphones synched to new-generation '5G' networks. Apple has accused Qualcomm, which maintains the most patents for chips, of taking advantage of its dominating position to charge exorbitant amounts for its chips or to access its patents. But the two firms soon after agreed to settle their legal disputes.