After being the first to reach 22nm then subsequently 14nm FinFET, Intel's chip development pace has slowed considerably for the move to 10nm with many losing confidence in Intel's ability to maintain a chip manufacturing advantage over competitors such as TSMC, Samsung, and Globalfoundries.

Intel announced a new modem chip for smartphones using faster 5G technologies as it seeks to outpace rival Qualcomm in the battle for next generation mobile gear.

Transistors on Intel's 10nm generation will still be denser than those on today's 14nm chips-as well as other companies' 10nm offerings, said Intel senior fellow Mark Bohr.

Intel aims to gain the upper hand in the budding field of artificial intelligence with a new lineup of chip products in 2017, a senior executive said.

After more than half a decade in the making, ARM server chips should have struck gold by now, but they haven't. ARM servers were projected to be approaching a double-digit server market share, but they still are virtually non-existent.

Northland Capital Markets's Tom Sepenzis today urges investors to "buy on the dip" Qualcomm's shares, which he rates Outperform, with a $75 price target.

Fresh blood and a little reorganizations might be the key for Intel to succeed in two hot new markets - IoT and automotive - that will be crucial for its hopes to reduce its reliance on PCs as the company's main growth generator.

As Linley Gwennap, the head of the eponymous research firm Linley Group, sees it, the "16nm" technology of TSMC and the others "is really 19nm," and the planned 7nm "will be about 13nm relative to Intel processes." Intel, he concludes, is a "a full node" ahead of the foundries, "Just as they have been for the past decade."

Instinet's Romit Shah today asks whether Intel's surprising step-up in its spending outlook presages greater investment in its relationship with Apple or some other project as yet undisclosed.

If you ask Anthony Yen, who leads EUV lithography development at TSMC, how critical EUV is to Moore's Law, he won't beat around the bush: "Totally critical. 100 percent critical. Very, very critical." TSMC expects to adopt EUV in 2020, when the company aims to begin producing chips on its 5-nm manufacturing line.

Qualcomm's X12 is capable of dealing with more channels of data simultaneously than its Intel rival, according to a report by Milan Milanovic, an analyst at Cellular Insights, which tests phones and networks. Apple didn't enable this feature "to level the playing field between Qualcomm and Intel," Milanovic wrote.

Intel is denying that the company is stepping back from wearables, though has not directly commented on the layoff news.

Among its early backers are technology group Samsung, German engineer Bosch and Hermann Hauser, the founder of Cambridge-based chip designer ARM.

Zeiss SMT has been a supplier to ASML for 30 years. It makes lenses and other equipment needed to focus the energy beams ASML uses to help companies such as Intel and Samsung create the circuitry of semiconductor chips.

With the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus, Apple elected to use LTE modems from two different sources, Qualcomm and Intel. The A1778 and A1784 iPhone models use a GSM-only Intel XMM7360 modem while the A1660 and 1661 iPhone models use a GSM/CDMA-compatible Qualcomm MDM9645M modem.

Things are looking good for Intel through the end of 2016, according to BlueFin Research Partners's Steve Mullane, after reviewing what he deems production levels last month at the company's factories.

Citigroup chip analysts Roland Shu and Christopher Danely conclude TSMC is a year ahead of Intel in foundry technique, even though Intel overall makes better transistors.

In a video shared with MacRumors by reader Yasser El-Haggan, an iPhone 7 can be seen with no service alongside an iPhone 6s with two bars of LTE after Airplane Mode is toggled off on both devices. Both of the iPhones are said to be AT&T models, which means the iPhone 7 has an Intel modem rather than a Qualcomm modem used for Verizon and Sprint models.

It is Apple, not AMD, that threatens Intel's hegemony

Intel appears to be dual-sourcing modems from both Intel and Qualcomm (which has historically provided all modems for all iPhones)-the iFixit iPhone is all-Qualcomm, while Chipworks' teardown includes an Intel part.