When you see your neighbor’s beards cut, put yours to soak. This popular saying can be applied to what is left of Qualcomm As a supplier to Apple, seeing how Intel has done with the Apple Silicon.
Since Apple bought the entire modem chip division of Intel with the intention of manufacturing its own, Qualcomm knows that its days as a chip supplier are numbered. 5G modem of LTE iPhones and iPads. And now it seems that he wants to give it back to those of Cupertino …
When orders for millions of dollars are moved between companies, corporate “squabbles” turn into all-out wars. And Apple now has two major enemies within the processor industry: Intel Y Qualcomm.
It is not necessary to explain much about the first: With the new era of Apple Silicon Macs, those of Cupertino are no longer going to mount more computers based on Intel processors, thanks to their new and successful M1 ARM processor designed by Apple and manufactured by TSMC. So Intel has gone from being a supplier friend, to being a pissed-off foe.
And with Qualcomm, three-quarters of the same will happen. It is currently the supplier of the wireless modem chips that incorporate all the iPhones, iPads Y Macs that Apple makes, almost nothing.
But everyone knows that a couple of years ago, Apple bought the entire division of Intel modem chips for a billion dollars, to focus on designing their own modems for their devices. So when Qualcomm runs out of its current contract it is supplied, bye, bye, Bombay….
Qualcomm has purchased Nuvia
On the other hand, the person in charge of the area of Apple processors of the series A, Gerard williams, and two members of his team, left Cupertino in 2019 to create a new chip company, Nuvia. The trio said at the time that they were planning to compete with Intel and AMD processors.
The fact is that Qualcomm has ended up buying this company, for 1,400 million dollars. That means Qualcomm now has insider information on the design and manufacture of Apple’s ARM processors, including the M1.
This week, the CEO of Qualcomm, Christian Amon, told Reuters that he believes his company can make the best chip on the market, with the help of a team of processor engineers who previously worked on the design of Apple processors but now work at Qualcomm.
It seems that the chip war is served. But now, due to the shortage of semiconductors, they will not have raw material to make the bullets….