lt cap,

Yes, I thought that it might be part of their large create-a-footprint strategy. INFN certainly did something like that, lowering prices on ititial equipment to get greater margins later. And while the chips may well differ in design, and that might be one of the sales points, I wouldn't expect that they'd really be 'proprietary' in anyway similar to the INFN route. Apple seems to rather constantly shuffle suppliers for all their components - including Intel providing the CPU in some earlier iterations, I think. It's just good business practices by Apple to do so, obviously. But it doesn't give you a 'seat at the table' the next time around, unless the goodwill in the relationship and how smoothly that goes counts for something. I'd believe that INTC's both having the 14nm process down pretty well by this time, despite the delays, plus owning their own fabs would give them some advantage in their flexibility on product/price. In the end, this is mostly just my thoughts on their position, and may or may not reflect the realities. Still, such a win is better than losing a bid. I'm sure Qualcom isn't exactly overjoyed about this.