As per a major report, Apple has started building its own cellular modems. Reports state that Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies, made this major announcement during a town hall meeting with Apple employees. Apple has been too reliant on Qualcomm and Intel to get the cellular modem. The US tech giant was already making its own SoC but had to depend on others to get the cellular modems. That dependency will soon cease to exist as they finally kicked off the development of its modems.
“This year, we kicked off the development of our first internal cellular modem which will enable another key strategic transition. Long-term strategic investments like these are a critical part of enabling our products and making sure we have a rich pipeline of innovative technologies for our future,” he said.
Building an in-house modem will save Apple a huge amount of cost and make them more self-sufficient. This move away from Qualcomm technology will only benefit Apple. Though, it might be a big setback for Qualcomm who records around 11% of the total revenue from the US tech giant. After this news broke out, Qualcomm shares sank as much as 6.3 percent in the market.
A move towards self-dependency has been underway since some time now. To achieve this objective, Apple acquired a large part of Intel’s modem business in July of 2019 for $1 billion or roughly Rs. 7,400 crore. This deal concluded just two months after resolving a long-running dispute with Qualcomm in April. The agreement between Apple and Qualcomm had a six-year licensing pact through which Qualcomm charges license fees on wireless patents it owns. T
his multiyear chipset supply agreement and Intel’s staff gave Apple an ample amount of space to build their own cellular modem. These modems have a huge importance in today’s market. They enable connection to the internet via cellular networks. Thus, without them, a possibility of 5G smartphones won’t exist. Apple used Intel parts for a few years and currently, their 5G iPhone models use parts from Qualcomm. This transition will help Apple to decrease its operating cost and thus boosting their profit numbers in the future. A date for Apple’s cellular modem to hit the ground is yet to be announced.
