According to the Wall Street Journal quoted sources, Intel is looking for strategic alternatives for its baseband business, including sales to Apple or other potential acquirers; not only that but in fact, Apple was in the summer of 2018. Negotiating with Intel to acquire the latter's smartphone baseband business has only entered a stagnant state due to the recent cooperation between Apple and Qualcomm.
For Intel, its baseband chip business is more and more like a hot potato.
The arrival of the mobile Internet tide, entering the baseband business
Intel officially entered the baseband market, which was already eight or nine years ago; the way it was adopted was simple – acquisition.
In August 2010, after announcing the acquisition of McAfee, the world's largest security technology vendor, for $7.68 billion in cash, Intel announced that it would acquire Infineon's wireless business for $1.4 billion in cash. In such an eager buying rhythm, Intel's ambition to enter the wireless communications market is evident.
It is worth mentioning that at the time, the iPhone was already leading the industry trend, and the iPhone 4 was released only two months ago, but it has already attracted much attention. At the same time, the first three generations of iPhones use Infineon's baseband chips, while on the iPhone. On the baseband of 4, Apple began to use two suppliers of Qualcomm and Infineon (but Infineon is still the main supplier).
It can be seen that Intel's acquisition of Infineon's wireless business takes into account the partnership between Apple and Infineon.
However, for this acquisition, Intel's then CEO said that the customer relationship between Apple and Infineon is not the main reason for this acquisition because the long-term direction of technology is more important; Intel hopes that 3G and LTE technologies are integrated into the chip to protect it's economy and market position.
Despite this, he also said in an interview that Apple’s CEO was very happy with Intel’s acquisition.
Technology lags behind Qualcomm and falls into the baseband dilemma
I was hoping to continue the relationship with Apple, but it turns out that starting with the iPhone 4s in 2011, Apple began to use Qualcomm's baseband chips in all models; even if it acquired Infineon's wireless business, then Intel Also can't get on the iPhone Express.
Fortunately, Intel has inherited other customer relationships from Infineon, so after the acquisition, its 2G/3G baseband chips can still be used in some models of Nokia and Samsung. For example, Lei Feng.com understands that in the models released in 2013, the Nokia 502 uses the baseband Intel XMM 2230, while the Nokia 503 uses the Intel XMM 6140 processor; Samsung is also in the international version of the Galaxy S4. Intel's XMM 6260/6360 3G baseband is also used on the phone.
Of course, the 2G and 3G basebands are only heritage and 4G in the future.
In February 2013, at the MWC of the year, Intel released its first 4G baseband product XMM 7160, which supports 4G LTE, manufactured by TSMC 40nm CMOS process, and the supporting SMARTi 4G transceiver uses TSMC 65nm – although this A baseband has been certified by various first-line operators in North America, Europe, and Asia, there are not many specific applications. The more famous products are the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1-inch version of the tablet, others are not well-known. The product has also been used.
However, compared with Qualcomm baseband, Intel is lagging in the 4G market cooperation and technical process.
From the partner's point of view, Qualcomm's baseband won big customers such as Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, etc. It is technically Qualcomm. In 2012, Qualcomm launched the MDM 9615 chip based on the 28nm process and used it for iPhone 5 in 2012. However, Intel still adopts the 40nm process in 2013, and naturally, it will not be favored by many customers.