How Apple’s $1 billion bet on Intel is paying off in India

Like Google, Apple too will now have engineers in Bengaluru working on its chip design initiatives.
This follows Apple’s $1-billion acquisition of Intel’s smartphone modem business in July. Sources told TOI that nearly 160 Intel engineers in Bengaluru are part of this business, and will move to Apple to join its global hardware engineering team.
Bengaluru is one of the world’s biggest chip design hubs. Google this year has been building a significant chip design base in the city. It has hired at least 80 – engineers from companies like Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia. Rajat Bhargava, who previously held senior positions in Broadcom and Intel, leads the team.
Internet firms like Google, Facebook and Amazon, as also Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft are all accelerating efforts to design chips for functions critical to them, not wanting to depend entirely on traditional semiconductor specialists like Intel, Qualcomm, AMD and Nvidia.