Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) hasn’t been as successful as Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) in the LTE modem segment, but that may all change in 2016 as it is being rumored that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is leaning toward the chip vendor’s XMM 7360 LTE modem in lieu of Qualcomm’s offerings, which have been in use in iPhones for several generations now.

Venturebeat, citing anonymous sources, revealed that a variant of the next-generation iPhone — aimed at Asian and other emerging markets —  will feature Intel’s new XMM 7360 modem:

Intel has been gunning hard during the past year for a place in the iPhone and now appears to have succeeded, at least partly. The 7360 chip will ship inside a special version of the iPhone that will be marketed to emerging markets in Asia and Latin America, the sources said.

Like Qualcomm’s X12 modem, the Intel XMM 7360 offers LTE Category 10 connectivity, which is achieved through 3x carrier aggregation. The cellular modem can attain download speeds of 450 megabits per second. The modem was announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this month, with commercial availability slated for the second half of 2015. Apple engineers have allegedly traveled to Intel’s R&D facility in Munich, Germany to work with the chip vendor on the modem.

One of the major issues with Intel’s LTE offering in 2014, the XMM 7260, was finding manufacturers that were willing to use the modem in their SoCs. Samsung and LG used the modem in a few of their products, with a few versions of the Galaxy Alpha and Galaxy Note 4 featuring the XMM 7260 module, as well as LG’s first in-house SoC — Nuclun.

Managing to get its cellular modem on the iPhone will be a major win for Intel, and will be yet another blow for Qualcomm, which has already lost Samsung as a customer for its Snapdragon SoCs — at least in high-end devices — this year. Intel is readily acknowledging that it is far behind Qualcomm in the mobile application processor segment, but by making power efficient LTE modems and offering integrated solutions for mid-tier devices aimed at emerging markets, such as the Zenfone 2, it is turning into a credible threat in this space.

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Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTC) second developer forum of the year — the first taking place during April in Shenzhen — officially kicked off in San Francisco Tuesday with a mobile theme as the event’s keynote was anchored around Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and other Intel executives taking the stage to announce the availability of Intel’s XMM 7260 LTE baseband in its first hardware win, as well as a series of developer tools for Android developers, as well as other mobile themed announcements.

On stage Intel’s Kirk Skaugen, Vice President of the PC Client Group,  said that the first hardware win for Intel’s XMM 7260 baseband will be in Samsung’s Galaxy Alpha smartphone, which is now shipping in Europe, Asia (excluding China/Korea/Japan), Australia and Latin America. The XMM 7260 and the 7262 modems are Intel’s first LTE Category 6 compatible basebands.

Sticking with the mobile theme, Intel executives also said on stage that Intel would be providing Android developers with an Intel reference design program to assist developers in developing hardware and apps for Intel-powered Android platforms. Intel’s Doug Fisher, the company’s general manager of software, said that Intel is committed to providing updates to Android two weeks after Google pushes out updates to AOSP.

Another tablet win

Later during the keynote Krzanich was joined on stage by Michael Dell to show off the Dell Venue 8 7000 tablet which contains Intel’s new RealSense snapshot technology. This creates a depthmap and allows users to fine tune focus adjustments to create a more accurate and true-to-life picture. Exact specs, pricing on the tablet have yet to be released but Dell did mention on stage that it would have a 2K resolution (2560 × 1440 pixels) and an 8.4-inch OLED screen.

A rendering of the Dell 8 7000 series.

At the Shenzhen IDF conference earlier this year, Intel’s Krzanich said that Intel was targeting to have 40 million Intel-powered tablets shipped by year’s end. Krzanich did not provide much in the line of in-depth information detailing exactly how many tablets had been shipped to date, or how close the company is to meeting its goal,

Always a place for the PC

While the bulk of the keynote at IDF was about mobile, and emerging markets from mobile such as wearables, Intel’s Skaugen also gave attendees the first official preview of Skylake — Intel’s next-generation architecture that’s due out next year. While there were no technical specifications disclosed, Skaugen did demonstrate a reference design of a 2-in-1 notebook powered by Skylake playing 4K video.

In contrast to Broadwell — which is largely targeted at low-power mobile platforms — Skylake will broadly target Intel’s customers and will find a place in a variety of form factors. Skylake will be built on Intel’s 14nm process node, and Skaugen said that development of the platform is progressing and its “health is great.”

Edison finally available

Intel kicked off the year at CES by announcing Edison, a tiny computer the size of an SD card that comes packed with WiFi, Bluetooth, and an Intel SoC.

Targeted at a variety of use cases from wearables to makers, Intel hopes that the system would revolutionize hyper small form factor computing. At IDF, Krzanich said that Edison is now available with pricing starting at $50.

Check back later for more from San Francisco as IDF continues. 

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