It isn’t a secret that Apple and Qualcomm are locked in a long-term legal dispute and now that seems to have affected who will be supplying the chips for this year’s iPhones. George Davis, Qualcomm’s financial chief, announced at an earnings call with industry analysts that, “We believe Apple intends to solely use our competitor’s modems rather than our modems in its next iPhone release.” But according to Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm’s head for its chip division, this doesn’t mean Qualcomm and Apple are done doing business together. Qualcomm believes it can still supply chips for Apple in the future.
Apple has been using both Intel and Qualcomm modems for different iPhone models over the years. And if Apple intends to use Intel this time around, expect the devices to have slower speeds. Different online testimonies have already said they’ve experienced stronger signal and LTE speeds on the iPhone models that use Qualcomm’s modems. A couple of days ago, Qualcomm and Ookla’s Speedtest.com released results showed that Qualcomm-powered Android devices were faster than Apple devices that used Intel’s modems (53 percent faster on T-Mobile and 40 percent faster on AT&T).
Source: GSMArena