Intel is the only vertically integrated semiconductor company. Nobody else has the architecture, ic design, and fab all under one corporate roof. Samsung comes close with custom IC designs and a fab, but they use ARM.
Samsung has held an ARM architecture license just about long as Apple ( 2008 ) has : [ 2013 article so about 2010]
"... It is known that Samsung signed an architecture license with ARM two to three years ago in order to develop its own AP platform. ..."
http://english.etnews.com/news/article.html?id=20130729200006
The Exynos 9810 isn't exactly a simple 'copy and paste" from ARM.
"...At 20.23mm² the Exynos M3 complex is
absolutely massive compared to other mobile SoC CPUs. At 3.46mm² for the core and accompanying L2 the Meerkat core is over twice as big as the 1.57mm² of the A75+L2 in the Snapdragon 845, granted that the latter has half the L2 cache. Meerkat indeed almost matches Apple’s Monsoon cores in the A11 which come in at 2.68mm² - but only if one takes into account the L2 cache of the M3 for which I roughly estimate 0.88mm². Apple also has a slight density advantage due to TSMC’s 10FF manufacturing node. ... "
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12520/the-galaxy-s9-review/3
[ NOTE: if Apple , Samsung , and Qualcomm are all implementing something of difference sizes that is significant. ARM has a central clearing house and shared baseline R&D mechanism but individually they are all doing more than just barely substantive work. ]
Whether they are getting 'bang for the buck" out of the extra work is open to debate
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13582/samsung-galaxy-note9-performance-review-snapdragon-vs-exynos
There is also an aspect that goes beyond just hardware. If not putting the right OS kernel support in there are also problems.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12620/improving-the-exynos-9810-galaxy-s9-part-2
Samsung non match is more so that it is not just one company. The silicon/fab part in separate subsidiary then the other parts. Samsung does a wide range of stuff. Phone . Appliances , Video Panels , etc etc. etc. The parent organization may actually do too much. They run into cooperating with competition ( partners that are competitors of other parts of the business ) and with trying to be everything to everybody ( raising that compete barrier to a large amount and lack of focus ).
Yes, a combination of ARM, Apple, and TSMC are currently doing very well and their combined future looks bright, but in totality they haven't quite caught up to Intel yet (but likely will soon).
Intel has done some stuff that didn't work out so well. MacAfee . Jumping into the cellular modem business buying Infineon ( about the exact same time Apple dropped them as the modem partner and jumped to Qualcomm). Just as they now wrestled Apple back they run into a process node problem .
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LOL
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I'm curious, do you think that Qualcomm's assertion that Apple 'stole' their technology has merit?
I have just assumed this was Qualcomm doing everything in their power not to lose a massive revenue stream AND control of the modem market.
it is creditable. Especially, if Apple went OCD with the notion of having Intel and Qualcomm modems "look the same" to the end users. (i.e., looking to minimize the differences). I don't think this was a simple as ripping off the specific binary (or source code) so that is was as much a copyright violation. However, if Apple was collecting all the differences of the modems performance in very fine details ( map all the parts where Qualcomm is 'ahead' of the Intel solution). Then Apple throws operative requirements and specs over the wall to Intel then could be some IP capture. Also could be IP that Apple demand Qualcomm do to integrate but didn't directly pay for. Test cases the Qualcomm had developed to work with quirky country X's custom deviations from the standards ( collecting some of those and throwing them "over the wall" to Intel to speed things up. )
Apple has usually puts the phones on tight deadlines so if Intel fell behind at some point someone at Apple could have tip-toed over the line a bit to get things back on track.
I suspect Qualcomm also knew in the back of the mind that Apple was looking over stuff too. Anything they could collect to help Intel stay on track for phone launch could be archive to help Apple's modem spin up go faster too. [ That all of the other major smartphone SoC implementors had intergrated modems wouldn't have been lost of them. Apple is by far the biggest buyer of 'discrete' modems in headsets. There may be a short blip with 5G but that's a long term trend line. ]
I also don't understand how it is really possible in a world full of highly intelligent and technically adept engineers/designers that no one has been able to design new (high quality) competing modem tech. ?
There are some decent ones. Especially if put decent antenna design on them. But the problem with Apple is they are always trying to push the thinner and less power consumption on each iteration. So the complexity is extremely high to stay on the upper bleeding edge of most features while also dropping in power consumption. If the celluar (and wireless) standards constantly change every year then it is a constant race that just requires you have been running the race longer ( more experience). But the time new talent can get to the present Qualcomm is gone because they had already pipelined another team working on next couple year's stuff.
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"We've been making modems for years. We know this product. These computer guys... they're not just going to walk in here and make a great modem."
Paraphrased Palm CEO on prospects of Apple jumping into the Phone market. Gruber had this tidbit that turned out to be true
"... If he really believes what he’s saying, it’s probably because he has no clue how Apple would approach this market. An Apple phone wouldn’t do
more than a Treo or a BlackBerry or a Razr — it would do
less, and what it would do, it would do really well. ..."
https://daringfireball.net/2006/11/colligan_head_stuck
Part of what the Palm CEO was missing point on was making a phone that satisfied all the various cell carriers had an "endless" set of requirements that had to be done. Instead of a phone that work mostly everywhere Apple introduced a phone that worked on one and only one cellular carrier. No apps. Managed to toss off vast majority of 'cruft' that the carriers typically made additional custom requirements.
The problem is that in the current context of selling super premium priced phones is that Apple can't show up with a works optimally with 2-3 carriers modem. It is part of the struggle Intel has had is that to replace the complexity that Qualcomm covers that the depth and all the crufty regional/carrier/equipment/etc variances is a quite complicated task. Jumping in with a highly simplified product isn't really an option.
Apple didn't jump into the Phone SoC by brining in application core and GPU cores and a host of other things in-house on day one. Apple eased its way into the pool.
If Apple is now in the mode of "We rich and double screw Qualcomm and screw Intel too ..... our farts don't sink. We'll just do it ourselves. " this could very well turn into a substantive stumble. Apple has money so it wouldn't "tank the company'. It is far easier to take a smaller working system and turn it into an incrementally larger working system than it is to jump straight to the larger system directly. The latter approach typically fails at significant rate. Especially projects that involves a substantive amount of software ( which software modems have).
Apple isn't necessarily going to fail, but they aren't necessarily going to succeed at this if they have the wrong motivations and plan. (e.g, Apple Car. giant buckets of money and not much to show. )