Its probably been a difficult few months for Apple. From Legal battles with Qualcomm to losing important employees. Its devices haven’t been doing as well as they used to either. So much so that we are witnessing multiple price cuts in a short period. But Apple has always and will almost definitely survive hard times. One such measure Apple is heavily using to protect itself is to invest heavily in custom parts/Chips. Recent reports talk of them putting significant effort into making custom Apple 5G chips to be self reliant.
Apple is known to be a very demanding customer of parts and chips from other companies. After the spat with Qualcomm, Intel was under enormous pressure to supply modem chips for the iPhones. The report states that Apple has lost confidence in Intel to make its 5G modems and taking matters into its own hands.
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Apple is said to have formed a team of 1000 – 1200 engineers, Some hired from Qualcomm and Intel to kick start the Apple 5G modem design process. Intel representatives have however said that Intel will be ready to supply 5G chips by 2020 but Apple doesn’t want to risk it. Intel CEO is allegedly wondering why Intel should continue working with Apple looking at the recent chain of events.
The Future
Industry experts say that it may take Apple up to 2 years to design and build its own 5G modem. We may not see a 5G iPhone till 2021. This will be a 2 year lag compared to Android devices.
There is no doubt that this delay is not really going to impact Apple. Delayed implementation of the latest tech has never hurt them. 5G is all the craze in the present world. With every smartphone manufacturer pushing for 5G technology, How is Apple going to answer the lack of 5G support in its 2019 and 2020 iPhones? We dont know. Lets just hope they either solve their disputes or find a way to work with existing partners. Otherwise a custom chip seems to be a long way away.
