Almost 160 engineers who were working for Intel’s smartphone business in Bengaluru, will now become part of Apple’s global hardware team. This follows Apple’s acquisition of Intel’s smartphone business in a $1 milliion deal. Around 2200 employees of Intel from across the globe will now move to Apple. All intellectual property, equipment and leases will also be transferred along with them. These engineers will contribute to building and growing Apple’s cellular technologies.
As part of the acquisition deal, Apple will be gaining almost 17,000 patents including protocols for cellular standards as well as modem architecture and modem operation.
However, Intel will continue to develop modems for non-smartphone applications. It will also develop 5G modems for personal computers, internet-of-things tools and autonomous vehicles.
In an attempt to be self-reliant and handle most of the work in-house, Apple has been recruiting engineers to develop modems and relevant components within the organisation itself. It has already set up an in-house team to develop processors for Apple iPhones and iPads. Apple has begun creating its own chipsets, or system-on-a-chip (SoC) for its iPads and Mac. This will make it less dependent on Qualcomm, AMD, Nvidia, Intel and other such companies for the modern chip.
Apple is not the only company that will be benefitting from Bengaluru’s engineers. The city has grown to be counted amongst the world’s biggest chip designing hubs. Even Google has set up its chip designing unit here, for which it has recruited about 80 engineers from Interl, Qualcomm and Nvidia.
