Qualcomm released its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2024 this morning, and at the earnings conference, Qualcomm also brought news about business cooperation related to Apple: Apple's license agreement with Qualcomm modem chips has been extended until March 2027.
True, this agreement has been extended again. In fact, in September last year, Qualcomm announced an agreement with Apple to supply Snapdragon 5G modems and RF systems for iPhones launched from 2024 to 2026.
Apple's self-developed 5G can be described as a bumpy road. At first, everyone thought that Apple, which has deep pockets, acquired Intel's baseband division and would soon make achievements in the field of 5G. In 2021, Qualcomm also estimated that by 2023, Apple's baseband chips purchased from Qualcomm would drop to about 20% of its demand. At that time, many ** also reported that Apple expected to use its self-developed 5G baseband chip in 2023.
2023 has passed, and we still haven't seen any results from Apple's self-developed 5G baseband chips. Ming-Chi Kuo and others** previously broke the news that Apple's self-developed 5G is expected to test the waters on the new generation of iPhone SE first, but then said that the self-developed 5G did not meet expectations, so the release of the new generation of iPhone SE will be postponed.
Later, it was reported that Apple's self-developed 5G is expected to start mass production in the second half of 2025, directly mounted on the iPhone 17, mixed with Qualcomm chips. But now that Apple has repeatedly renewed its contract with Qualcomm, I don't know when I want to see Apple's self-developed 5G chips.
It is understood that there are two main reasons why Apple's self-developed 5G chip has been delayed again and again. First, after Apple acquired Intel's modem chip business, it found that Intel had a problem, and Apple needed to rewrite it, resulting in a very slow progress; Second, Apple also needs to avoid the patents of Qualcomm, Ericsson and other manufacturers as much as possible in the process of self-developing 5G, so the difficulty is further increased.