iPhone 7 may come with Intel's LTE modem chips

Intel wants to replace Qualcomm as the “default” LTE modem provider for Apple, which would significantly boost the chipmaker's position on the mobile market.

Arkadiusz Piasek, Published 10/19/2015

According to a new report Intel has assigned as many as one thousand of its engineers to work on the 7360 LTE modem so that it can be used in next year’s Apple iPhone 7. The recent generation of Apple’s smartphones, the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, both use Qualcomm’s 9X45 LTE chips.

The report, published by VentureBeat, also states that in the longer perspective, Apple would like to create a system-on-a-chip (SoC) which would include both Apple’s Ax (currently A9) processor and Intel’s LTE modem. Combining both components on a single SoC built in Intel’s 14 nm process would bring significant improvement in speed and power efficiency. At present, Apple’s A9 chips are manufactured by Samsung and TSMC.

Allegedly, Apple engineers are already in Munich, where the 7360 LTE chip was created, working together with Intel’s team on optimizing the 7360 LTE for use in iPhone 7. The whole situation has been reportedly as “a must win” for Intel. The chipmaker wants to replace Qualcomm as the “default” LTE modem provider for Apple, which would significantly boost its position on the mobile chip market where it has not been as successful as on the desktop market.

The Intel 7360 modem supports up to Cat. 10 LTE and up to 450 Mbps transfer rates.