Apple Acquiring Majority of Intel’s Smartphone Modem Business

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Apple revealed plans to acquire the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business Thursday. Over 2,000 Intel staff will join Apple as a result of the deal, which includes the purchase of a number of patents too.

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After Speculation, Deal for Intel Business Confirmed

News of talks between the two firms emerged earlier in the week.  They have now confirmed a deal. The two companies have worked together in previous years, including during Apple’s long-running legal dispute with chipmaker Qualcomm. Indeed, Intel said it would exit the smartphone modem market after that dispute was resolved.

Apple Gaining Staff and Patents

The deal is part of moving chip development in-house. The transaction was valued at $1 billion. However, the companies said that in total, 2,200 Intel staff will join Apple as part of the deal.  Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies said that the company knows the team coming from “Intel shares Apple’s passion for designing technologies that deliver the world’s best experiences for our users.”

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,” he added. “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.”

Intel CEO Bob Swan said:

This agreement enables us to focus on developing technology for the 5G network while retaining critical intellectual property and modem technology that our team has created. We have long respected Apple and we’re confident they provide the right environment for this talented team and these important assets moving forward. We’re looking forward to putting our full effort into 5G where it most closely aligns with the needs of our global customer base, including network operators, telecommunications equipment manufacturers and cloud service providers.

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