Apple's reportedly trying to buy Intel's modem unit - Here's Why

[WYP]

Would Intel be foolish to let 5G go?



Read more about Apple's plans to acquire Intel's Modem division.

 

[demonking]

what a decision to make!
Sell our losses to another company and they turn it profitable or Don't sell and risk never making anything on it. Catch 22.
Apple are wise to do this, whether Intel should give up or not is another question, Chances of Intel breaking into this sector in a big way are not the best, though chances of them doing it without the 5g IP behind them make it even slimmer.
I'd sell it personally, I can't see intel making a massive margins behind this and the odds of licencing it even smaller. Does anyone see 5g as a big thing in notebooks? It would be the only reason id say for intel to hold off.

 

[grec]

Yeah Intel essentially shut down the division after Apple indicated they would probably no longer be a customer, it's been on hiatus, and they still seemed to have problems left to solve. The division was almost entirely reliant on Apple, so if Apple aren't going to buy the products from them, this is the 2nd best thing.

 

[WYP]

what a decision to make!
Sell our losses to another company and they turn it profitable or Don't sell and risk never making anything on it. Catch 22.
Apple are wise to do this, whether Intel should give up or not is another question, Chances of Intel breaking into this sector in a big way are not the best, though chances of them doing it without the 5g IP behind them make it even slimmer.
I'd sell it personally, I can't see intel making a massive margins behind this and the odds of licencing it even smaller. Does anyone see 5g as a big thing in notebooks? It would be the only reason id say for intel to hold off.

Yeah Intel essentially shut down the division after Apple indicated they would probably no longer be a customer, it's been on hiatus, and they still seemed to have problems left to solve. The division was almost entirely reliant on Apple, so if Apple aren't going to buy the products from them, this is the 2nd best thing.

Intel can't make the business profitable without customers, and they don't have customers because they are behind Qualcomm. If they were even or close enough they wouldn't have trouble getting customers.

5G makes sense for notebooks, especially for ultrabooks and other lightweight designs. Intel also has their plans to supply hardware for 5G infrastructure.

Ultimately everything depends on if Intel wants to push 5G for notebooks and what deal they can make with Apple which will allow that to happen. Intel partners have already shown 5G compliant M.2 cards. Smartphone-wise, they might as well sell, but it's other market segments that Intel could still find 5G IP useful for.

ARM wants to create more powerful devices and Qualcomm wants to get into laptops. Delivering 5G alongside more powerful ARM cores could start to build momentum for Microsoft's new Windows on ARM stuff, provided that Intel doesn't have a response.

5G is gonna be a big deal for mobile computing, as it can offer a latency decrease as well as 1Gbps speeds (see link below for EE's thoughts on 5G).

https://shop.ee.co.uk/features-and-...andingpage_2colhover_4gvs5gdifference_Q1_2019

 

[NeverBackDown]

5G isn't really important though. Sure it's faster but who cares? So little supports it it's basically going to be equal to RTX right now and will stay that way for a long time. We can already get 4G out of notebooks I'm not sure why faster speeds are so important.

 

[grec]

5G will bring faster than copper broadband to much of the world where fibre-to-the-home isn't available. It's not just a step forward for wireless networking, it's a step forward for all networking. The 1ms target latency of 5G networks are unparalleled for every form of internet connection except fibre to the home, which brings the possible use cases for internet connections to a whole new world of devices, including real time robotics, monitoring and IoT with a far greater distribution, while significantly reducing the costs of new infrastructure in cities and for companies. The roll out for many countries is already faster and wider than any previous wireless technology due to the significant cost savings and economic benefits it will bring. The biggest boons for 5G are definitely for industry rather than consumers(Unless you're a gamer or something where that ultra low latency becomes valuable), but even then the much greater capacity will also help free up and speed up existing 4G and 3G networks for more traditional use cases or rural coverage.

 

[NeverBackDown]

And yet all that and there are already reports the few 5G towers in the US causes cancer as people are getting sick because they have to have HUNDREDS of towers in a small area just to get the signal across. Not sure if true but still.

It won't expand the internet to more people in any significant way. Only wealthy 1st world countries will benefit. 3rd world countries will still not get access to this.

 

[grec]

Actually third world countries are amongst the quickest to adopt 5G, much of the "third world" wil have 5G access in 2020. Much of the middle east for instance already has 5G rollouts. Many African countries were amognst the first to have viable 5G networks. 5G is generally far cheaper for the kind of densely populated areas that dominate developing nations compared to previous technologies. With early pushes for rollouts like in Turkey, 5G is being used to significantly reduce the cost of connectivity for their citizens, since it's far cheaper than rolling out fixed home broadband or older technologies. It's actually only large, wealthy, widely distributed countries with existing widespread fibre networks where 5G becomes less valuable.

Also yeah, the health scare thing is pretty baseless, 5G towers actually operate at far lower power levels than previous technologies because they are so widely distributed, so the radiation is much weaker with 5G, even then it is of course non-ionising so incapable of turning cells cancerous, the WHO classify the risk from non-ionising radiowaves roughly equivalent to the risk from pickled vegetables and talcum powder. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48616174