Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Says Its 5G Modem Will Come to More Devices, Here's Which Ones
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I keep waiting to upgrade my iPhone til a substantial update, and they keep adding substantial updates every year lol
Forget Ultra Wideband / mmWave (which the C1 doesn't even support), do you want to cut your sub-6GHz download speeds in half, or worse, to save 1-3% of your battery? No thanks!
I mean the vast majority of FM radio is trash, so sure its free, most decent radio stations have a way to stream it
download speeds in half? I guess we'll see, Even Mediatek is pretty well caught up with QCOM. If apple is 70% as fast and I get 2-3 hours of battery out of the deal, I won't even notice the speed drop
The original 6-year agreement was made in April of 2019, which means that ends this April, but there was an option for a 2 year extension which they opted for, that will end in April of 2027.
The iPhone 19 will debut in the Fall of ‘27, by that time Apple’s C3 modem should be ready, and according to the report here, Apple is hoping it will perform as well as whatever Qualcomm is offering. But even if it falls a little short, who’s going to care? People are still going to buy an iPhone. Even today Apple’s top of the line iPhones do not use the fastest Qualcomm has to offer.
So far they’ve spent $1B to buy Intel’s work. Spent 6 years investing in R&D. And have just now, released a product with this component. Where exactly are all these profits Apple is more concerned about?
Vertical integration is also way more difficult and more costly… Yes, Apple doesn’t have to buy the parts, but they still have to pay engineers to design and develop them. Plus pay someone else to actually manufacture them. Plus they still need to pay licensing fees to use them.
100% this. Although my guess is that Apple would prefer to keep celluar connectivity to iPads/iPhones only so it allows them to sell more devices as people would buy an iPad AND a MacBook to have the connectivity they need.
I'd equally love to see FaceID come to MacBook's too
I didn't expect so much anger from this article. We’re really mad about mmWave 5G availability? Only a few countries use it, and in the US it's extremely limited as to who would have access. Seeing as this is a phone for grandparents and kids’ first iPhone, I think this is a very understandable use case. Also, all we hear is how much battery life matters over everything, and Apple adds battery life and it's not enough?
I see a future where you don't pay an extra $100 for cellular, but Apple adds that capability to every device, and you just pay your carrier for data for that month. As 5G becomes faster and more accessible, hopefully technology can develop further (like we were promised when 5G was first introduced).
Does Apple put profits first, and are they losing steam in innovation? Yes. But when they try new things out and take a leap forward, people are so eager to talk about how it's a flop. But how many companies are making their own chips, making their AVP copies, and probably soon their own modems.
I see a future where you don't pay an extra $100 for cellular, but Apple adds that capability to every device, and you just pay your carrier for data for that month. As 5G becomes faster and more accessible, hopefully technology can develop further (like we were promised when 5G was first introduced).
Does Apple put profits first, and are they losing steam in innovation? Yes. But when they try new things out and take a leap forward, people are so eager to talk about how it's a flop. But how many companies are making their own chips, making their AVP copies, and probably soon their own modems.
Do you know how much Apple pays for Qualcomm's modems every year? It's not hard to find out. It's a lot, and Tim Cook grinds his teeth every time he has to sign the check. Even if it means forcing Apple customers to pay more for a less capable solution - under the guise of "power efficiency," of course - Tim doesn't care.
Apple Silicon was genuinely better than anything Intel could do. This is entirely different. It's purely a cost-cutting exercise.
Exactly. There is also the not small matter of Qualcomm’s absurd licensing fee scheme where they not only charge for the price of the modem chip used but charge a percentage of the total end product value. That immediately puts Apple at a disadvantage because Apple products are premium (>$600) and ultra premium (>$1000) and average sales prices hover around $870. Apple’s premium and above sales are 95% of its sales, last year over 218M iPhones. At 5% royalty fees on wholesale proces for finished iPhones and iPhone average sales prices rising over the past 4 years, that works out to $12-20 back in 2019, That’s about $7 billion dollars to Qualcomm beyond the chips themselves.
Competing premium Android products may have similar prices but their entire total sales volume is barely 65-70M annually (Galaxy S all combined ~36M, Z Foldables ~11M, Google Pixels (which don’t even use Qualcomm modems, and not all are premium) ~10M, maybe 8-15M among all other makers.
Last edited:
Not sure how you would run your company, but being able to SAVE money sounds like a no brainer. Plus, you have absolutely no idea how well Apple’s modems in the future will work. Apple is not replacing ALL THEIR MODEMS with the C1. It has only appeared in a single “low-end” model. All other cellular devices still use Qualcomm modems. So your argument is completely unwarranted.
Your mmWave navel-gazing is obvious, but the fact is very few of the billions of people who use a cell phone have access to that technology and may never. So the C1 not having mmWave support is not a big of deal as you seem to think it is. And guess what? If you NEED it, don’t buy the iPhone 16e, it’s that simple. There are many, many devices that do not support mmWave either.
The C1 offers power efficiency and it offers optimizations that a Qualcomm modem could never achieve, as it is closely integrated with the A18 to provide optimizations to network traffic, being able to tell the modem what traffic to prioritize, based on the users actions, as the network becomes more congested.
Furthermore, you have no idea that the cost of the 16e starting at a higher price point than the SE has anything to do with the C1. If Apple was only concerned about cost-cutting, then we should expect see all their devices switch to the C1 immediately.
Last edited:
100% this. Although my guess is that Apple would prefer to keep celluar connectivity to iPads/iPhones only so it allows them to sell more devices as people would buy an iPad AND a MacBook to have the connectivity they need.
I'd equally love to see FaceID come to MacBook's too
I think once they can integrate it into the SoC it will show up in all their devices. But that’s not going happen until after a few generations of the modem has been developed and refined.
Definitely expecting all devices to have either a cellular modem or an integrated one. Might take two to three years. Next year all iPhones should have it, iPads probably the year after. As for a cellular Mac, it can happen in 2026 or maybe another year more till Apple integrates the C chip into a single chip.
I see iPhone and iPad mentioned for C1. We want C1 in a MacBook Pro. It’s easy to add and it’ll be a killer feature to work on the go without tethering.
Let's hope Apple have done their IP due diligence. They wouldn't want another case like the Massimo / pulse oximetry issue where Qualcomm successfully claim patent infringement and block the sale of any device with infringing technology. Apple can't just disable the offending feature as they did with the Apple Watch without rendering the phones useless without WiFi.
Because the companies that own the cellular networks are transitioning to 5G and eliminating backward compatibility.😉If all we care about is power efficiency, which frankly sounds like an excuse for poor network speeds, why not just go back to 4G LTE?
When I suggested on Reddit that Apple should add a 4G/5G modem to the Mac, I was immediately downvoted into oblivion on Reddit. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. It seems that whenever someone presents an idea that deviates from the norm, people are quick to shut it down, not necessarily because the idea lacks merit, but because they believe their own personal experience makes them more knowledgeable.
Agreed. I suspect there will be greater difference in network speeds between carriers than there will be between the C1 vs Qualcomm modems. And all but super power users will never notice. And super power users won’t be buying a 16e.
I’m not an Apple fan boi but, come on. Have you used the 16e with the C1 modem in it yet? if you haven’t then you don’t know what you’re talking about.
mmWave itself is a joke, it's only available in the US, although China has some 5G mmWave antennas but the coverage is not great.
Therefore, mmWave is not a "pro" feature essentially because you almost take advantage of it when you're in coverage and considering that only 2 countries have certain spots with that 5G coverage, it makes it totally useless
By the same users who, when Apple does finally do this, will say things like:
"Apple kills it again with cellular onboard in a way that only Apple can do ... the best! 'nuff said"
If all we care about is power efficiency, which frankly sounds like an excuse for poor network speeds, why not just go back to 4G LTE?
5G mostly benefits networks, not end-users. The one thing many phone users might benefit from 5G, is better connection and transfer speed in congested areas like a stadium.