![]() According to a recent analysis of the cost of materials in the newest iPhone SE, the first version of the more affordable iPhone model with 5G capability, the chips that allow the phone to connect to cell networks collectively cost as much or more than the chips that make up the “brains" of the phone-the A15 processor and its attached memory chips. The first is cost, says Wayne Lam, senior director of research at technology consulting firm CCS Insight. (The exception is the Apple Watch, which since the Series 4 model has used an Intel modem.) While it’s possible that Apple could be planning to use 5G modems from another supplier starting in 2023, analysts are expecting that will be the year it reveals its own, Apple-designed modem.Īs was the case with Apple’s move to its own processors for iPhones and Macs, designing its own chips for cellular connectivity could give the company a number of advantages over competitors. Currently, Qualcomm supplies nearly 100% of these chips. In November 2021, Qualcomm’s chief financial officer said the company expected to supply 20% of the 5G modems Apple uses in its mobile devices in 2023. Malladi and a Qualcomm spokesman declined to comment on the company’s relationship with Apple. In Irvine, Calif.-home to the headquarters of Broadcom, which designs critical parts that sit between a phone’s modem and its antennas-Apple has a satellite engineering office and, according to its own jobs website, around 20 open positions.īroadcom didn’t respond to requests for comment. ![]() In San Diego, Qualcomm’s hometown, Apple is advertising around 140 positions directly related to developing and integrating cellular modem chips. The company agreed in 2019 to acquire the majority of Intel’s smartphone-modem business, including 2,200 employees, and since then has continued hiring engineers with related expertise, often at satellite offices in the same cities as its sometime-partners and possible future competitors in wireless technology. ![]() There are, however, plenty of signposts showing where Apple is headed on modem chips. In a rare interview with my colleague Tim Higgins, Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies and leader of its chip division, discussed how it developed the A-series iPhone microprocessors and M-series for Macs, but declined to say anything about future plans, for modems or any other chips. And all of this has had to happen while keeping phones more or less the same size, and without requiring a comparable increase in the capacity of batteries, he adds.Īpple keeps details of its chip operation, like much of the rest of its business, closely guarded secrets, and says almost nothing publicly about its aspirations. ![]() Applications like full augmented reality-overlaying a computer-generated reality atop the real world, and projecting it into our eyes through smart glasses-will require faster-than-ever data transfer rates, and lower-than-ever latency, which is a measure of how long it takes a signal to make a round trip from a device to the internet.Īchieving those blistering-fast speeds has put unprecedented demands on the creativity of engineers, who have delivered a 100-fold increase in peak data-transfer rates in the past 10 years, says Durga Malladi, head of 5G and mobile infrastructure at Qualcomm.
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