Qualcomm has literally thousands of patents on 5G implementation. Even if you completely did a novel way of doing it, good luck in the tech-illiterate US justice system when the lawsuits come.
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Apple Extends Deal With Qualcomm as Custom 5G Modem Delayed
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Apple bought Intels work for the parents first and foremost….
I imagine life is pretty stressful in the basement labs making modems at Apple. I guess that also means more years of wait until there's a 5G chip in a laptop.
I think they’ve had working modems for a year or two now. The stress is in the legal department coming through hundreds/thousands of overly broad patents and trying to find out if it’s ok compliance.
The "Custom 5G" chip rumors are the absolute worst posts that come up on MR and they are posted pretty often. I'm obviously a geek as I'm posting in the MR forum and even I'm like "who gives a f***" 😂
As was already mentioned in past threads on this topic of Apple buying Intel's modem business so it can develop it's own modem chips so it can do away with having to pay Qualcomm tons of money to use it's modems, it is alleged that Qualcomm hold all the 'good' patents for mobile phone modems which is why Apple is struggling to develop it's own custom modem chip's because they are using patents that whilst good do not allow Apple to achieve the modem performances it's needs to and to achieve the good performance they need to license patents from Qualcomm which it is believed Apple do not want to.
Intel had been making modem chips for years, they had the resources (money, R&D engineers and designers, chip making machines) and not even they could match Qualcomm for performance. In my opinion Apple will fail just as Intel did.
Intel had been making modem chips for years, they had the resources (money, R&D engineers and designers, chip making machines) and not even they could match Qualcomm for performance. In my opinion Apple will fail just as Intel did.
This was back from last year, and likely holds the key to the delays:
9to5mac.com
Apple 5G chip problem in iPhone 15 is likely legal, not technical
See the update at the bottom of the piece. The iPhone 15 was expected to be the first lineup to...
9to5mac.com
Why not just buy Qualcomm?
I don't think even the US would allow that to go through.
Yeah... it really is sad. And has been going on for a loooong time.
I guess that's the only way some people can feel better about themselves.
So the 20th anniversary iPhone is the one to avoid, got it! Ironically the iPhone X which was also the 10th anniversary of the iPhone had an Intel modem. Still use my X to this day. It’s awful modem! Had to restart my iPhone everytime I exited the subway in New York.
The wording here is suggesting that is not in play. From the Bloomberg article (and quoted in thread's first post ).
"... In a statement, Qualcomm said that the deal with Apple covers "smartphone launches in 2024, 2025 and 2026." The agreement was originally set to expire this year and the iPhone 15 lineup was once rumored to be the last to rely on Qualcomm modems. ..."
So yes Apple could have about a three year 'wind down' but this appears to be moving the start of the wind down back three years. In other words, once Apple signs a deal for a new/latest Qualcomm modem they will have rights to buy the modem for as long as they want. (at least for a specific phone/device . )
A pretty good chance that the bleeding edge, most expensive iPhones are the ones they do last for the transition. Especially, if the move is primarily aimed at costs.
If Apple designed something that was package/pin compatible they could toss it. There were years where Apple shipped both an Intel and Qualcomm modem ( early on when first starting to drop Qualcomm ). It is some additional engineering to do so, but if there costs savings on a device that was going to have a lower price point, that could be worth the expense. (depends upon hold long going to sell in the older state. )
Part of the reason why Apple acquired Intel's modem unit was to get access to its patent portfolio (which goes back to the Infineon days). But it's true that Qualcomm's portfolio is stronger.
mmWave is typically deployed where there is Verizon and density. A stadium with 50,000 people and mmWave antennas deployed to where they can 'see' the audience means that there is less congestion for the folks with mmWave phones than the ones sharing limited sub6 bandwidth in a single cell. Just getting voice or 'text' messages is downloading data on modern systems.
If travel the highways over long distances you won't see it at all. the high end mmWave is not good at wide open spaces.
We'll probably never get the full story of where the challenges are, but I feel like it would be a really good case study for the industry. Is it an IP issue, is it that the 5G technology is so sophisticated that even the premiere tech giant can't pull it off, is it a challenge with finding and retaining the right talent, is Apple trying to do too much at once in how they integrate this into their system?
Apple does tend to leave developments in the lab for a much longer time that most companies do, working to get it just right before they let it out to the market. Perhaps this is how all Apple developments run and this one is just easier to stopwatch because we know the date of the Intel sale. As others have said, it's likely that Apple was mostly after the Intel patents and not necessarily the existing Intel design.
And whatever they put together needs to be at least as good as the current Qualcomm offering or it doesn't make sense to change over, so they're starting from behind and have to outmatch the industry leader.
It really would be a good case study to learn from.
Apple does tend to leave developments in the lab for a much longer time that most companies do, working to get it just right before they let it out to the market. Perhaps this is how all Apple developments run and this one is just easier to stopwatch because we know the date of the Intel sale. As others have said, it's likely that Apple was mostly after the Intel patents and not necessarily the existing Intel design.
And whatever they put together needs to be at least as good as the current Qualcomm offering or it doesn't make sense to change over, so they're starting from behind and have to outmatch the industry leader.
It really would be a good case study to learn from.
Wells that's good to know. I used to work at a hospital right next to a college football stadium, and when they had home games, cell service was nonexistent for a near a mile in every direction, across all the carriers. Not even SMS would go through.
They ended up installing some picocells in the hospital so we had something. Wi-Fi calling was still pretty new.
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If a patent is essential it falls under FRAND for BC and QC a lot of their stuff is FRAND'd and has to be provided for a reasonable cost to pretty much everyone.
Its not that they HOLD the only Good patents. Its that for QC... This is their core. They have been doing it so long that they not only know how to do it but the best ways to do it. Knowing their patents can end up being FRAND and apple not being able to come close to performance indicates apple is unable to find BETTER ways of doing what QC is doing. Patents in this case isn't in the as they can use the patents from QC.
Its just... currently there isn't a better way and that is what I think they are finding out. You can't frand en entire chip as its more costly than buying a modem from QC and using it instead.
Apples business is not in the modem world where as QC is. Intels modem unit is not young either and they couldn't match up to QC.
QC has what feels like a 20 year head start in R and D and they do make significant improvements each year to their modems even during the covid lock downs they kept churning out modems. the x70 and x75 would have been affected by covid yet the x70 came out on top and performs extremely well.
Look I am not bashing apple but everyone who thinks apple will just be able to suddenly beat a company with many years head start, AND who improves significantly each and every year AND one who continues to dump money into R and D.. is delusional. especially if they think it will be done in 5-10 years.
Apple needs many years of modems going public, gathering data, and using it to improve like what QC does. They might be able to match the x70 performance in a few years but by then QC might have the x90 etc out
Huawei just stopped putting orders in to Qualcomm because they are forbidden from using US tech due to sanctions.
mmWave is a bit complicated to deploy due to its wide spectrum footprint. It is also being a bit muted in the USA because C-band opened up.
"... Currently, C-Band in the U.S. falls between 3.7GHz to 4.2GHz frequencies as defined by the FCC. Other parts of the world use anywhere from 4GHz to 8GHz. Most of the 5G companies in the U.S. have honed in on a specific C-Band spectrum between 3.7GHz to 3.98GHz. Why this particular range? Because the FCC auctioned off that unused spectrum in 2020 to the top U.S. wireless carriers, including Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. Verizon was the biggest spender, but these carriers bid upwards of $80 billion to grab this set of C-Band frequencies for their 5G networks. ..."
What is C-Band 5G?
Helping to take our 5G networking experience to the next level
www.androidpolice.com
" ...
| 5G type | Speed capabilities | Range from cell tower | More info |
|---|---|---|---|
| mmWave (24–47 GHz) | 600 Mbps and above | Line of sight (less than half sq. mile) | |
| C-band (3.7–4.2 GHz) | 100-500 Mbps | 0.5–6 sq. miles | |
| Low-band (600 MHz–1 GHz) | 30-50 Mbps | Hundreds of sq. miles |
..."
What Is C-Band 5G and Why Does It Matter to You?
C-band 5G promises faster speeds, lower latency, and higher reliability across a spectrum of frequencies. How does it work and what makes it different from other types of 5G?
www.highspeedinternet.com
Technically, here that subset is 'sub6' but only a narrow set of phones that are typically also equipped for mmWave have support to that upper range.
5G has been an 'explosion' of frequencies (and protocols) to cover. There is lots of effort into repurposing old legacy frequencies to 5G protocol ( turning off "1G" "2G" networks ) and covering new bands.
I don't think most are happy about Apple struggling -- this segment desperately needs good competition. The problem is that we've been down this road with Intel modems in the past, and it was bad.
I only upgraded from my iPhone 6s to an iPhone 7 due to the phone arbitrarily shutting off, which I'd later learn was due to "battery-gate". But I had already long since traded in my 6s by then.
The iPhone 7 was a fine phone if it weren't for that Intel modem. Phone calls constantly cut out, and had tons of problems in areas that were fine with the 6s. I eventually replaced it with an iPhone X that had a Qualcomm modem. The difference was night and day.
The Huawei tech is likely just Qualcomm's work stolen by corporate espionage, anyway.
Probably. I'm more than happy with Qualcomm 5G modems in my devices for the foreseeable.
Doubt it. One of these days the west is going to have to look at the reality that China is an actual tech juggernaut because they’re educating armies of engineers and scientists.
It’s not 1990 anymore. At some point we’re going to have to cope with their success while we’re busy graduating useless MBA’s for the financial sector parasite our economy is based upon…