Intel is again seeking to partner with Apple to supply its mobile communication chips for future iPhones.

Most of Apple’s smartphones have used chips from Qualcomm.

“Chances are high that global smartphone makers such as Apple and LG Electronics will use Intel’s baseband chips in their products down the road,” said Lee Hee-sung, the president of Intel Korea, at a press meeting on Thursday.

“Such collaborations are highly likely given that the world’s largest smartphone maker, Samsung Electronics, has recently announced its midrange premium handset the Galaxy Alpha, which contains Intel’s XMM7260 baseband modem.”

His remarks came amid rumors that Intel has been in talks with Apple, which is said to have only used Intel chips for two previous models ― the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4.

Intel has remained an underdog in the mobile processor market, having failed to gain a strong foothold in the sector, compared with Qualcomm, which had secured almost 70 percent of the global cellular baseband processor market by the first quarter of this year.

Lee declined to comment further on the company and Apple.

The world’s largest PC chip maker launched its latest processors for data servers in Seoul.

The Xeon E5-2600/1600 v3, which houses up to 18 core chips and has a 45MB cache, is three times more powerful than its predecessor.

The new processors will be used in servers, workstations, storage devices and networking infrastructure to power data analytics, high-performance computing and cloud computing.

They can also be used for back-end processing for the Internet of Things, Lee said.

“Intel will help our partners (such as Samsung and SK Telecom) achieve innovation in their data centers and make the most of cloud-based services,” said the Intel Korea president.

Kim Duk-sung, a senior engineer from Samsung Electronics’ memory business, said Samsung and Intel are currently collaborating to develop a platform of the latest processors and use it to create potential products and services.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)