Stefan Mileschin

That is why they walked away

In the last two weeks, there was much discussion about the possible reasons for Intel to walk away from 5G smartphone modems. The real reason is straightforward, the tape out of the 5G smartphone chip was not successful, and it would not be there in time for the 2020 iPhone. Another critical point was that Intel hasn’t made money on smartphone modems either.

Intel rarely talks about its modem business, but sometimes it was stressed that it has a key customer that drives an incredible amount of volume. To our knowledge, Intel had to invest some $2 billion a year to keep the development catch up phase with Qualcomm, and the Apple deal wasn’t enough to cover those costs. Some of this money came back via products sold to Apple, but this was nearly not enough to make a positive balance sheet.
https://fudzilla.com/news/mobile/485...-chip-deadline