According to recent reports, by the company, The Information, Apple is working on an in house developed modem, in order to better outrun the competitors in the market.
It has been implied that the company is working on developing its own hardware, due to the recent job listings posted in San Diego and Cupertino offices. These listings demand cellular modem architects, to design and develop a layer one cellular PHY chip.
A person briefed on Apple’s plans said, and has been quoted: “the company has an active project to build its own cellular modem chip”.
Originally, Apple relied on the company Qualcomm for the chips used in the phone. With the release of the iPhone XS series and iPhone XR, these chips were replaced with those made by Intel. This move resulted in the Qualcomm and Apple being rendered in a feud, of sorts over a patent dispute. The modem that is being developed in house, is still in the early stages and is not likely to be released for the iPhone anytime soon.
The Bloomberg earlier reported that Apple is set to launch a 5-G enabled iPhone, for which the modem will be provided by Intel. This will be released in the year 2020. Rivals of Apple, like Oneplus and Samsung have announced their plans to launch a 5G enabled smartphone next year itself.
It was reported by Cellular Insights, that this in house development is not a surprise move, as the Intel provided chips are not at par with the ones supplied by Qualcomm, causing the iPhone 7 variants with the Intel chip to run slower. A technology blog conducted an LTE connectivity test, which revealed this information.
This year, a 7nm chip is going to power the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR. This is Apple’s own creation, an A12 bionic chip, with a neural engine and a six-core CPU, the first of its kind in the industry.