Apple is still working on an iPhone modem from its own development. Now a high-ranking manager has also commented on this topic. Apple is currently back on Qualcomm modems. It remains to be seen whether the six-year term of the new license agreements with the chip designer will be fully utilized.
There has been speculation about Apple’s own cellular modem for some time. In 2019, Apple took over the 5G mode development from Intel, around 2,200 employees switched to Apple and joined Apple’s mobile technology team.
Dependence on third-party companies should be further reduced
Apple was in a bind last year: On the one hand, they wanted to bring 5G to the iPhone as quickly as possible, but they lacked a suitable modem. At the time, not only Apple, but large parts of the tech industry had fallen out with Qualcomm, numerous legal proceedings were ongoing, and regulators were targeting Qualcomm.
But Intel was too slow and too poor in performance and is supposed to be Apple’s engineers regularly driven into despair to have. Ultimately, Apple bought Intel’s modems division and eventually got involved with Qualcomm again,
The iPhone 12 was subsequently equipped with a Qualcomm modem and that will probably not be any different for the upcoming models. The successor models of the X55 currently used in the iPhone are already available.
Qualcomm modems were licensed for six years in 2019. It is not known whether the company’s own Apple modem will be used beforehand. Johny Srouji did not comment on this either.
