Apple’s been performing on its cellular model technology for years now, but the primary iPhone model with an Apple-designed 5G modem shouldn’t be expected before 2023 at the earliest.
Custom Apple chips that power the iPhone and iPad set the benchmark when it involves sheer speed, but rival Samsung still beats Apple in terms of integration. While the iPhone’s custom A-series chips integrate the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, and RAM (along with a couple of other parts) onto one silicon die, Apple still uses discreet baseband chips made by Qualcomm.
But this will change when the corporate finishes work on its own in-house 5G modem, which could appear within the iPhone models coming down the pike in 2023, consistent with a search note from TF International financial analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, seen by MacRumors.
We predict that the iPhone will adopt Apple’s design 5G baseband chips in 2023 at the earliest. As Android sales within the high-end 5G phone market are sluggish, Qualcomm will be forced to compete for more orders within the low-end market to catch up on Apple’s order loss.
An earlier research note from an equivalent analyst predicted that the Cupertino technology group could complete 5G modem development by 2022 or 2023.
Apple could also delay its 5G iPhone modem introduction.
Custom modems as a high-stakes game
Developing a custom chip that’s compatible with a good sort of radio technologies and supporting many cellular network standards in use across the planet today may be a very expensive endeavor. as an example, rumors of Apple’s modem date a couple of years back.
It’s believed the Cupertino giant’s assigned quite a thousand engineers to the project.
Apple jumped on the 5G bandwagon with the October 2020 launch of the iPhone 12 lineup.
The handsets use Qualcomm’s 5G baseband chip following a settlement within the Apple v. Qualcomm lawsuit over patent licensing terms. Apple aimed to ditch Qualcomm modems in favor of Intel’s ones. Easier said than done—soon after Intel had exited the modem business, Apple ended up acquiring the chip maker’s engineering group.
Before Qualcomm, Apple wont to procure its iPhone modems from Infineon.
