especially considering the smashing success that they’ve had pushing out Intel
That’s kind of the point being made in the article, though: they could succeed in the chip game thanks to a multi-decades head-start from ARM, and a decade on top of that of co-developing semi-custom designs for the mobile market. Apple management convinced themselves that this would be a repeatable feat, oblivious to the fact that modem is a the completely different beast.
Apple should eventually find success in going vertical with the modem, and when that happens, Qualcomm will learn what being difficult costs.
Apple is throwing billions a year at a problem they vastly underestimated, and is far from done yet. If one thing, they are only now grasping the true cost of what they were paying for (and complaining was too expensive). I hate Broadcom just like the next guy, but Apple was just employing bully’s tactics to have Broadcom cave, and in the end they were right not to. In the end Apple may succeed, and that will only be good for us, consumers.