Report: Intel’s modems may end up in future iPhones

Enlarge / Stand aside, iPhones 6S! You're old news! (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

The iPhone 6S has been out for a couple of weeks. It's old news! And as such it is time to move on to speculation about the next model. And while it's going to be a while before we start seeing detailed leaks about the "iPhone 7," VentureBeat is already reporting that Intel wants to get its next-generation LTE modem included.

The report says that Intel's upcoming XMM 7360 LTE modem, a Category 10 part capable of download speeds up to 450Mbps, is a candidate for inclusion in the next iPhone and that the company has "a small army of people on the Apple account" who are working to make sure it happens. VentureBeat's sources say that Apple and Intel haven't signed a deal yet, but that "a deal will happen if Intel continues to hit its project milestones."

Up until now Apple has relied exclusively on Qualcomm for the iPhone's LTE modems, but the company commonly sources screens, NAND, and even the main SoCs from multiple suppliers to alleviate supply constraints. If Intel could crank out a modem with performance and power consumption similar to Qualcomm's, there wouldn't be anything stopping Apple from using both parts or even switching to Intel's exclusively.