Following more than a year of “intensive talks,” The Wall Street Journal reports Apple has reached a preliminary agreement with Intel for the former titan to produce some of the chips that power its devices. The scale of agreement is unknown at this time. As the Journal notes, Apple has recently shipped more than 200 million iPhones per year, and needs a steady supply of silicon for millions of other devices, including iPads and Mac computers.
Apple did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request. Intel, meanwhile, declined to comment.
According to the Journal, over the last 12 months Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has repeatedly met with Apple leadership, including outgoing CEO Tim Cook, to convince the company to get back into business with Intel. Prior to 2020 and the arrival of the first Apple Silicon chipset for the Mac, Intel was, arguably, one of Apple’s most important partners. Starting in 2006, the company’s iconic MacBook line experienced its first renaissance after former Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the company’s initial wave of Intel-equipped laptops. In a roundabout way, Apple’s own C1 modem also wouldn’t exist without Intel; Apple bought the majority of the company’s modem division in 2019 for $1 billion. That deal saw approximately 2,200 Intel employees, as well IP and equipment, transfer to Apple.
But like many of Apple’s supply relationships, the honeymoon with Intel was not to last. By 2010, the company had begun designing its own chips, starting with the Apple A4, which eventually made its way to the first iPad and iPhone 4. In 2015, Apple also released the 12-inch MacBook, its first fanless laptop. The 2015 MacBook was a device ahead of its time, but it was also the debut of the company’s widely reviled “butterfly” keyboard design. I suspect the performance of the Intel’s ultraportable processors in that computer played a part in Apple’s decision to go with its own chips. Speaking from experience, the 2015 MacBook and its revisions never felt particularly fast on account of their x86 architecture.
By 2020, Intel was a shell of its former, once dominant self. The company had, for many years, failed to counter Qualcomm — and by extension ARM — in the mobile space. More recently, the once unthinkable began to occur when AMD began to take PC CPU market share away from Intel on the back of its excellent Ryzen processors.
However, recent geopolitical shifts appear to have worked in the company’s favor. After Intel appointed Lip-Bu Tan in 2025 to take over for former CEO Pat Gelsinger, President Trump was quick to criticize the executive and call for his resignation over past ties to China. But Tan appears to have won the president’s ear shortly thereafter, because later that same year the White House announced it would take a 10 percent stake in Intel. In September, Intel then signed a $5 billion agreement with NVIDIA to build PC and data centers CPUs for the AI giant. In April, it then followed that up with agreement to support Elon Musk’s Terafab project, which will see Intel produce chips for Tesla, SpaceX and xAI.
Now the company would appear to have at least a preliminary deal with Apple. The Journal reports President Trump personally advocated for Intel to Tim Cook during a meeting at the White House.
Credit: Source link