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Qualcomm Predicted to Remain 5G Modem Supplier for iPhone 15 and iPhone 16
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Because if it was so easy to make a good quality modem, Qualcomm wouldn't be pretty much the only one making one.
With Apple's capital and net worth, I think it's time they start developing and manufacturing all their own parts.
Well, there's mediatek, and they actually one-upped Qualcomm by having dual 5G support before Qualcomm.
Apple couldn't do otherwise, IMO:
Intel, after failing at launching 5G modems, chose to sell a few divisions to focus on the least bad businesses.
Hadn't Apple bought them, I could see Intel close the division (or sell it to a company which couldn't afoord to pour money into R&D).
And Qulcomm would have even more leverage about modems.
Could be...
My theory is Apple badly wanted to bring modem development in-house. Similar to what they and Srouji did with Apple silicon and resulting A/M series chips. And not being beholden to another company for an important and pricey piece of their phones. Also... being able to eventually roll their own (hoping to, anyway) secret sauce into Apple modem chips unavailable to competitors, and thus locking Apple into a large competitive advantage over competing phones having less performance, is huge.
The problem was/is...Qualcomm. And their deep well of outstanding innovation and experience in modern digital communications technology - and portfolio of patents. They deserve the the ton of respect respect they've earned over many decades.
Makes you appreciate how hard it is to make these modems, if years later even Apple can't make one for the. hundreds of millions of phones and cellular iPads they will be selling over the next few years.
That Intel modem acquisition is sure looking like a waste now, huh? I'm sure it'll pay off in due time though.
Well, I hope future 5G modems from both Qualcomm and Apple will be much better. Because, as it stands right now, 5G is the most over-hyped feature ever. Even when I have a four-bar 5G signal on my 13 Pro - even from the mm band - service runs hot and cold... sometimes fast and sometimes slow. Switching to LTE can fix things. I and colleagues have experienced this in many locations and with different service providers.
It likely has more to do with the spiders web of patents Qualcomm has on their modem technology. There are a few product categories that are nearly impossible to DIY because of patent nonsense.
There seem to be projects that never see the light of day. That will always be the case.
Those can always be licensed/cross-licensed. To me this looks like an execution problem. And now the response is CYA instead of admitting they are canning the whole thing. Nobody continues to invest for years in something that failed.
Especially without getting sued for patent infringement.
“CAN be” and “are being” are two different things.
I don’t want to go down this rabbit hole here but the tech patent landscape is a hot garbage fire of overlapping nonsense managed by lawyers and judges who have no understanding of the validity of the patents they’re ruling on. There are thousands of overly broad patents that give single parties de facto control over entire *concepts* rather than *implementations* that patents are supposed to cover.
An entire industry of merely buying up patents and suing years after the fact for royalties exists. There’s no reason a financial firm should be allowed to own patents for mere rent seeking, but that’s pretty much the state of the world today.
It's not that hard to build anything if you have the right talent. The problem is finding the right talent. There are a lot of people that market themselves as being experts in a certain area without really being able to go deep. The difference between a failed project and a successful one is having people that know the last 5-10% of corner cases which 99% of self-proclaimed experts don't.
This is not a good sign for Apple’s cellular modem division if their is rumors the Qualcomm deal is going to be extended. It would not surprise me if we see Apple just shut down that division since I doubt they can make a cellular modem that matches or exceeds Qualcomm cellular modems.
Depends on where you live, but it sounds like a deployment problem which has nothing to do with modems. If you're in the U.S., it has the slowest 5G network in the world.
The biggest problem with 5G in the US is the discontiguous patchwork of spectrum assembled through a myriad of acquisitions and mergers, different license boundaries in each band, and the late clearing of n77/n78 spectrum.
The contiguous chunks of C-band awaiting clearing this year, along with T-Mobile picking up Sprint’s low-band will make for three fairly equal carriers a couple years from now as all these transitions mature and complete.
Yup. Unless Apples modem is at least on par with Qualcomms, they’ll never put it in the flagship phone. And unlike Intel which stagnated for years, Qualcomm keeps innovating and executing.
This is a tough one, modems and RF are very different from CPU/GPU.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. After all, Apple put in Intel and software crippled Qualcomm modems from 2016-2019.
This is unclear. How many companies in the world make modems?
The big relevant ones are: Qualcomm, Samsung, Huawei, MediaTek. (There are a few smaller less well known ones, and many other companies that produces parts of the "5G system".)
All 4 ship modems that work adequately within their target use cases.
So basically all one can REALLY say is that "Intel found it hard to build a 5G modem", not "it is hard to build a 5G modem"; and that may say something about Intel (purveyor of such fine products as Itanium, Quark, Habanero, Optane, and 10/7nm processes).
Modem design seems to be the latest version of what was CPU design and then GPU design: a field where few understand the details, but everyone's enough of an expert to make wild claims like "no-one can enter the market now because all the good ideas are controlled by patents, and every aspect of the problem is so complex".
Honestly what I find more interesting (and worrisome) is the lack of progress Apple has made in incorporating more WiFi and GPS tech into their other chips. For example, it seems like they should be able to provide more advanced WiFi or GPS (without cellular) on Apple Watch. Even if those are not great implementations, they do provide real world testing of the functionality in a lower stakes environment.
Maybe the patent issues mean the per-unit cost for adding this functionality is not minimal? Even so, the lack of progress on WiFi and GPS (as opposed to constant improvement with BT) is where I'm concerned. No-one expected cellular to happen fast, but starting small and growing each year is feasible for GPS and WiFi.