Our well informed industry sources are quite sure that Apple is not working on its own LTE modem. To put things in perspective, high-end phone chips such as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 come in an SoC package that includes the LTE 150Mbits per second capable modem. Apple A7 doesn’t have that and neither does Intel, Nvidia or Samsung with its SoC.

Nvidia will have LTE inside the Tegra 4i. Intel has something in the works, a SoC that will have an integrated Sofia LTE, but only in 2015. Mediatek, a company that it gaining a lot of ground, should have an integrated SoC with LTE on board a chip that might fight the Tegra 4i and it might be a fierce competitor.

Apple on the other hand will focus on making a fast 64-bit ARM-based successor to the Cyclone-based Apple A7, possibly codenamed A8, and this chip will once again be a big piece of silicon without an integrated LTE modem. Apple will continue to use Qualcomm’s external LTE chip for next iPhone, for the sake of argument let's call it an iPhone 6.

Apple traditionally allocates a huge portion of a SoC for graphics and we have no doubt that Apple will continue to offer great GPU performance, but in 2014, we believe that Tegra K1 or its Denver 64-bit sibling might take the GPU crown for the 2014. There is also Qualcomm with the Snapdragon 805 and Adreno 420, but we will have to wait and see as Adreno 420 doesn’t look faster than Tegra K1 at this point.

When it comes to integrated LTE, in the high end Qualcomm will remain a sole player as Tegra K1 doesn’t have an integrated modem, Apple its approach with LTE on a dedicated chip and Samsung will use Qualcomm modems or SoCs for many markets where LTE matters.

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