INTC is supplying APPL with all the X86 chips for their Desktop and Notebook lines. Whos is too say that in 2009/2010 when the form factor and power envelops are competitive enough to compete with ARM that APPL and INTC are not 100% in bed together.
Today's iPhones are based on ARM processor technology. Intel abandoned its ARM chip line in practice last year, but focused its efforts on its own x86 processor platform in spirit back in 2005. Since the two are incompatible, moving to x86-based iPhones would by necessity render all existing iPhone apps unusable on the new platform.
The only iPhone application development Apple has encouraged are applets that run within the Safari browser, and these would be relatively easy to move to a new processor platform. All the others will require re-compiling from ARM to x86, and even then Apple can't guarantee that users will upgrade to new versions - or even that the original coders will do the re-compile.
That leaves Apple's support teams fielding calls from iPhone users - many of whom have priority service packages, part of the lure to get them to fork out up to $699 for original 8GB iPhone - who complain their handsets crash when they run application X.
To avoid that, Apple has to incorporate ARM emulation technology in the iPhone so that such apps will run - and even then it's not a certainty.
But cut off third-party native application development and you can head off all these problems at once.
There's the logic - is it likely? That depends on the veracity of the claim Apple is pondering a move to Intel technology. It's said the shift would take place with 'Moorestown', the follow-up to next year's version of UMP, aka 'Menlow'. Moorestown is due to become available in the 2009/2010 timescale, according to Intel, so if Apple does shift to Intel, it'll almost certainly happen with the third generation of iPhone.
[2009/2010 is a long way off. There is now guarantee AAPL will switch from ARM code base to x86 code base. This requires huge SW porting effort. Meanwhile MRVL won Tavor (HSDPA+Xscale) and Wifi+Blu chips for 3G iPhone launched 2/08. Why don't you celebrate what you have in hand first ? This alone should boost the stock by 25%. Stop panicking everyone !]
To make the move sooner, Apple would have to go with Menlow, due in Q1 2008 and which combines Intel's 45nm 'Silverthorne' processor and the 'Paulsbo' chipset with on-board graphics. But Menlow's perhaps aimed more at small web tablets than phones, so Apple might well want to wait for Moorestown, which puts processor and chipset into a single chip, and its forecast big reduction in power consumption: 20 per cent of what Menlow uses.
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