[ChuckNorris89]

Intel's modem division was not exactly Intel, it was the modem business unit they bought from Infineon Semiconductors of Germany in 2011.

Having worked in the semiconductor business in Germany and having friends who worked at Infineon there, the cause would be the corporate culture that rewards incompetent management riding the gravy train(old boys club) instead of engineering effort and playing the politics game is the only way to move up, even though lots of engineers there are very talented people.

This, coupled with Intel's own innovation culture that fails at anything that doesn't involve milking the X86 resulted in a dumpster fire.

Under Apple, these same engineers could probably ship something competitive if Apple plays their cards right.

[fapjacks]

It's too bad anything Apple manufactures is effectively taken completely off the market unless you are interested in buying the thing packaged inside of extremely expensive form factor.

[cpach]

Well that’s vertical integration for ya. (Or is it horizontal? I always mix those two up due to some kind of spatial orientation hangup I have.)

[ianai]

Vertical, apple buying hardware companies for use in its own hardware.