By hmimcu 
Recently, Cristiano Amon, CEO and president of Qualcomm, revealed in an interview with reporters at the Mobile World Congress that Apple is expected to produce its own 5G baseband chip in 2024. “We expect Apple to produce its own modulator and demodulator in 2024, but if they need us (modems), they know where to find us.”
If the CEO of Qualcomm is right, then the September iPhone 15 series will be the last model equipped with Qualcomm 5G chips.
As is well known, Apple has been trying to replace chips from third-party suppliers through self-developed chips, but progress has been very slow. According to Armon, Apple should have finally made a breakthrough and successfully developed its own 5G modem.
It is worth noting that Qualcomm had previously told its investors that it would only supply 20% of the modems for Apple’s iPhone released in 2023, and later changed it to “the majority”. Now Qualcomm has changed its view, which seems to be mainly due to Apple’s failure to launch its own 5G modem as scheduled.
What step has Apple taken in developing its own 5G baseband chip?
Apple has been planning to develop its own baseband chips for several years, with the aim of maintaining its independence and reducing its dependence on companies such as Qualcomm or Broadcom. In order to develop their own baseband chips, and even during the intense patent dispute with Qualcomm before this, they “laughed and lost their grudges”.
In late 2019, Apple officially announced the completion of its acquisition of Intel’s baseband business for $1 billion, in order to accelerate the development speed of its self-developed baseband. By acquiring Intel’s relatively mature baseband R&D department, Apple not only successfully recruited about 2200 Intel baseband R&D personnel, but also obtained several patents, devices, and leases, covering everything from cellular standard protocols to modem architecture and operation, and even a mature XMM 8160 baseband, which can be considered a starting point for Apple’s self-developed baseband.
The author has analyzed that developing self-developed 5G chips has many benefits for Apple. Firstly, self-developed 5G chips have improved product competitiveness. In previous Apple products, the strength of the Apple A-series processor is already evident. Through the specialized optimization of high-performance A-series processors combined with iOS, the performance of the iPhone is much stronger than other phone manufacturers, and its self-developed A-series processor has become an important aspect of differentiated competition between the iPhone and other phones. In terms of signal processing, some argue that it is because Intel has not focused on baseband chips as its main development business, resulting in significantly lower signal quality than Qualcomm’s baseband chips. This has also led to Apple being criticized for its poor signal quality. In the current era of 5G technology shining brightly, 5G technology has become a battleground for major mobile phone manufacturers. If Apple can develop its own 5G baseband chip and match it with a customized operating system for the product, it is also possible to achieve the same effect as the self-developed A-series processor back then, making the communication quality and experience of the next generation iPhone even higher, thereby improving the competitiveness of iPhone products.
The second is to compress iPhone production costs. Apple insists on developing its own 5G chips, which may pave the way for cost control of future Apple products. At present, advanced Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 and Kirin 990 chips have integrated 5G baseband chips, which have significantly improved overall performance and power optimization of the chipset. If Apple can achieve self-developed 5G baseband chips and integrate them, it will undoubtedly reduce its dependence on Qualcomm 5G chips, reduce external demand for components, and reduce product manufacturing costs.
In addition, Qualcomm’s baseband technology is globally leading, making it difficult for Apple to use Qualcomm’s 5G baseband chips at a more reasonable price without being subject to Qualcomm’s regulation. Therefore, self-developed 5G baseband chips can also help Apple increase its leverage in future negotiations with Qualcomm, and it can also become its second supplier.
But obviously, self-developed baseband chips are much more complex, and the losses in the integration team, lack of experience in technology, and centralization of communication patent technology have made it difficult for Apple to achieve breakthroughs for a long time. However, now that Qualcomm has personally come out to speak up, I believe this news is not unfounded and will be revealed next year.