Apple would give up on developing its 5G modem

It has been known for many years that Manzanain an effort to achieve complete independence from third-party components, it developed 5G modem. The idea, of course, was to ditch the chip currently provided by Qualcomm. However, a report by user yeux1122 on the Naver blog (via McRumors), who allegedly has reliable information related to the Asian production chain, claims that Apple has finally given in. The 5G modem project would have been canceled.

In its turn, @Tech_Reverecognized The source of information The mobile sector seems to have heard the same information from its own sources. For now, it’s best to take this matter with a grain of salt.

Of course, in the recent past there have already been reports that Apple faced many challenges while developing its 5G modem.. Without going into detail, two weeks ago Mark Gurman, a journalist from Bloomberg and one of the most reliable sources about Apple’s upcoming products noted that the project is getting more complicated than expected.

Apple’s plan was to have a 5G modem ready by 2024. That is, the iPhone 16 was supposed to be the first device into which it would be integrated. However, due to a number of technical problems, the launch was delayed for several years. In the best case, it will be completed by the end of 2025 or beginning of 2026.

Apparently, Apple realized its 5G modem as soon as it was released, will lag far behind competitors in terms of performance. One of the proposed projects did not even support mmWave technology, which is key for the 5G network to achieve high data transfer speeds.

Wall Street Magazine This also added to the bad news. In September they reported that the project was not going according to plan. Mainly because Apple would not have been able to foresee the technical difficulties associated with developing a 5G modem. The prototype had overheating problems and was so large that it could not be built into an iPhone.

Barriers slowing progress include Apple’s use (or use) of technology Inteland adapting it to its goals turned into complete chaos.

We must remember that in 2019 Cupertino residents bought Intel’s 5G modem division for $1 billion. Its goal was to speed up the development of its own chip and abandon Qualcomm technology as soon as possible. This acquisition, in addition to providing an extensive patent portfolio, allowed 2,200 Intel engineers to join Apple’s ranks. All of them, of course, were involved in the 5G modem project.

Unfortunately, it looks like Intel technology has become a headache. Instead of accelerating development, it slows it down. They even had to rewrite the code because the original didn’t meet Apple’s performance needs.

If it is confirmed that Apple has abandoned development of its 5G modem, that would be a huge failure. Not only because they failed to become independent from Qualcomm, but also because they would have wasted $1 billion and several years of dedication…