Apple plans to use its self-developed 5G baseband in the iPhone starting in 2025. This news comes from a briefing released by the famous Tianfeng Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on September 7.
It is understood that Apple began planning its own modem as early as 2018, and acquired most of Intel's smartphone modem business in 2019 to strengthen its capabilities in this area. However, these measures face some challenges and further breakthroughs are still needed. For example, UBI Research research specialist Dae-Jeong Yoon, Barclays analysts Blayne Curtis and Tom O'Malley have successively stated that Apple's self-developed 5G baseband has encountered obstacles and cannot meet Apple's expectations. Therefore, Qualcomm may continue to be a modem supplier for the new Apple iPhone SE and iPhone 16 series.
Although under such circumstances, it seems that Apple's independent research and development of 5G baseband is completely unrealistic, but Kuo Ming-Chi believes that Apple will still be the first to apply the independently developed 5G baseband on the iPhone SE 4 model to experiment and test its feasibility. sex. If successful, it will be used on the iPhone released in 2025 or 2026.
This also shows that Apple's technical strength is constantly improving. In recent years, the update speed of Apple products has been very fast, and each upgraded version has huge innovations. In the field of smartphones, Apple has always been in a leading position, such as wireless Bluetooth headsets such as AirPods, independently developed computer chips such as the M1 chip, and new products such as the Apple Car that attract global attention, etc.
Apple's move is expected to further enhance its competitiveness in the mobile phone market. Independent research and development of 5G baseband can help Apple not only control the production line independently, but also reduce its dependence on third-party suppliers.
However, there are still many unknown factors in this matter. How to break through the limitations of 5G baseband technically requires more research and experiments. Moreover, companies such as Lenovo have begun to develop independent 5G baseband chips according to the "structural separation" threshold requirement, which will bring greater competitive challenges to Apple.