There's nothing specific to Verizon about Qualcomm anymore. No one cares about CDMA performance, as the network is shutting down in a little over a year. It's all about LTE, and all four carriers would benefit from a Qualcomm LTE modem.
It's hard to say if Apple/Intel can catch up with Qualcomm in terms of performance. It's also hard to tell if Qualcomm's advantages in performance were because of their superior R&D, or because of their shady anti-competitive practices, or some combination thereof.
