Yeah, and Nuvia (now Qualcomm) aren't the only ones who sniped them.

Apple's effort to make a good modem also reportedly failed, so its not like their chip team are miracles workers.

Not that I am skeptical. Apple has a long history of making good premium SoCs.

This has probably been the biggest issue Apple has faced post M1. They've lost lots of top people to other companies trying to design performance cores like Apple's. That and their SoC development resources are spread across far more products than they used to be.