Industry Expert Blogs

The media already has Apple and Intel in talks to make the A11 SoC in 2018 as a result of the recent Intel/ARM IP licensing deal. This is probably one of the funnier media bumbles I have read in a while so let’s talk about it in a little more detail.

“According to Nikkei Asian Review, Intel is now perfectly poised to give TSMC a good run for its money in as little as two years because any Apple chips after the A10/A11 should be fabricated by Intel.”

First a little bit of history: As we wrote in “Mobile Unleashed” Chapter 7, Intel had the opportunity to make Apple’s SoCs from the very start but Intel again could not see the forest for the trees:

“According to ex-CEO Paul Otellini, Intel had been in discussions about a mobile chip for Apple before the original iPhone design. The cloak of secrecy on the iPhone gave Intel little to go on, and they were skeptical of Apple’s volume projections. “There was a chip [Apple was] interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more, and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn’t see it,” said Otellini. Intel passed.”

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