Enlarge / Modern iPhones in three sizes. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)
Unlike Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, and other SoC manufacturers, Apple doesn't integrate an LTE modem into its iPhone SoCs along with the CPU and GPU, which means the company needs to order external modems. Those modems have historically been provided by Qualcomm, but according to a report from Bloomberg, Intel is officially being tapped as a second source of modems for the next iPhone.
The report indicates that iPhones sold on the Verizon network and in China will continue to use Qualcomm modems—it's unclear what this means for carrier-unlocked iPhones in the US, which can be used on any major mobile network without issues—but even so, this is still a big deal for Intel. The company dominates the shrinking PC market, but so far it hasn't been able to make much money from smartphones. In recent months, it has even dramatically scaled back its plans for smartphone SoC designs.
These rumors have been floating around since just after the iPhone 6S was released, and Qualcomm indicated in April that it could be losing modem orders from its "biggest customer" to a "second source."
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