In my opinion there is only one reason why Apple poaches Qualcomm engineers and that is so Apple can find ways to get around Qualcomm's Intellectual property on modem design. I do believe one of the engineers they poached was the man who was mainly responsible for designing the modem's core design. The problem was that Qualcomm took the matter to court explaining that knowledge the man had was so confidential that he would not be able to use what ever he had in his head to help design Apple their modem chip because he would inevitably use information that is proprietary to Qualcomm and therefore protected under law. Apple tried to do the same with senior engineers poached from Tesla but that also got stopped in it's tracks by Telsa.
If a company wants the inside track on another company, they poach their employees. Apple did that with Qualcomm but it did not work because Qualcomm could see what Apple was trying to do and shut that down. You need to remember this important fact. Apple had bought Intel's modem business which mean they now owned there very own highly experience modem design team who had decades of design experience amongst them but yet Apple having this very experienced design team still went after Qualcomm designers. There is only one explanation as to why, they wanted to know how Qualcomm's modem chips were so good. It is a fallacy for companies to think that once they poach an employee from a company, they now own what is inside that employee's had. No they do not and that has been tested in court by both Qualcomm and Tesla.
One of the things you also need to remember is this on going battle to make chips thinner and compact as possible because it reduces the overall size of the PCB. Smaller PCB's means smaller electronic devices. Intel and Apple's chip designers TSMC have been going at this for years. Qualcomm currently have to license from chip fabricators this technology. Whilst Intel does not have it down quite as good as TSMC, they still have good designs and that could be extremely crucial to Qualcomm, no longer having to spend millions of $$$ every year to license someone else's patents, buying Intel would allow them to have there own. And as already mentioned by another member buy Intel would also mean Qualcomm would have access to Intel's numerous chip fabricators which would put them on a higher chip output level than TSMC.
So, just think of this for a minute, if Qualcomm purchased Intel, Qualcomm, who make the best modems now having access to patents that would allow them to make the modem chips thinner and smaller AND having access to multiple chip fabrication plants that would allow them to build a lot more of the best modem chips, way more than what TSMC could. So, even if Apple were able to get their modem chips in order, they would be wanting to sell their chips to other device manufacturers but how are they going to do that if Qualcomm already known in the industry for making the best modems would be able to out produce Apple in modem chip quantity.
Look at it this way, if lets say Sony plan to design a portable gaming device that has cellular connectivity and they need a good strong functioning modem chip and there is Apple with their 5G version and Qualcomm with their 5G version. At present Qualcomm can not compete on production numbers with Apple which could limit supply numbers to Sony but how different would that be if Qualcomm bought Intel with them now being able to out produce Apple with the best modem on the market. Apple knows Sony is not going to pick them because Qualcomm would be able to produce the numbers Sony would require.
THAT is why Qualcomm buying Intel would be a huge threat to Apple and I think Apple would know it.
